(MONEY Magazine) – There's a widely held view that our stock market woes were all but inevitable given the inexperience of those in charge. Twenty-six-year-old fund managers and dorm-room CEOs, goes the conventional wisdom, "had never seen a bear market." Well, I'm 25, and if my contemporaries never saw a bear market, it's because they weren't paying attention.

I'm talking, of course, of the baseball-card bubble of the late '80s and early '90s.

The market for baseball collectibles was in full bloom at the time, and my friends and I wanted to take part. But older collectors had long been buying up the best cards from the '50s and '60s, driving their prices out of our range. Cards featuring current blue-chip players, meanwhile, didn't interest us. Where, after all, was the growth potential in a 1987 George Brett or a Reggie Jackson issued in the years of his final decline?

The card market inevitably turned to tomorrow's blue chips. We started going after rookies who had yet to prove themselves--young players who up to that point had shown mere hints of physical genius. Eric Davis. Wally Joyner. Benito Santiago. As with Internet stocks, the card market had its own tipsheets: No deal was struck without consulting the Beckett Baseball Card Monthly, which tracked prices and touted potential winners. Before long, people started buying on mere momentum. I remember everyone suddenly wanting a Gregg Jefferies rookie card. It was selling for over $10 before he'd even played a full season. "Everyone thought there was upward mobility in those young stars," says Rich Klein, an analyst with Beckett.com.

Eventually, of course, it all came crashing down. Many of the players we'd pinned our hopes on fell victim to injury or went on to unspectacular careers. Plus, there were some underlying market weaknesses. "I don't think anybody realized how many of those cards were produced and what would happen to those cards when everyone decided to sell," says Klein. Flipping through my portfolio now, I'm struck by how many of the cards for which I paid $1 or $2 or even $10 are now valued at 10[cents]. Or less. Their primary worth now is as a lesson in speculation.

It's a lesson that many young investment professionals could have learned before they started playing with other people's money.

--SRIDHAR PAPPU