Jim Beckett

Dr. James Beckett founded Beckett Publications in 1984. In the mid-1970s, while a professor at Bowling Green State University, he published his first baseball card price guides as “free-upon-request” pamphlets to, in his words, “bring order out of the chaos that existed” in the baseball card industry. These pamphlets led to annually published price guides and were the forerunners of Beckett’s monthly collectibles magazines.

Dr. James Beckett has had an active share building the hobby industry, attending the Hawaii Trade Conference since its inception in 1985. Dr. Beckett sometimes goes by Jim Beckett. He ran Beckett Publications as the CEO until selling it for a reported $20,000,000 in January, 2005.

Jim Beckett earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from Southern Methodist University in 1975. Prior to starting Beckett in 1984, he served as an Associate Professor of Statistics at Bowling Green State University and as vice president of a consulting firm in Dallas, Texas.