What Is The Score Board, Inc.?

The short answer

The Score Board, Inc.was a publicly traded sports memorabilia, autograph, and licensed-collectibles company founded in November 1986 by Paul Goldin and Arthur Sherman, headquartered in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. It is not the same company as the “Score” trading card brand made famous by Score cards and Pinnacle Brands -- the two are unrelated companies that just happen to share a name and a 1998 bankruptcy year, and even some published card-hobby references mix them up. Score Board built its business on autographed memorabilia sold through outlets like the Home Shopping Network, owned the Classic Games trading card operation for a stretch in the mid-1990s, and was run in its final years by Ken Goldin, who later founded Goldin auction house.

From penny stock to $108 million in sales

1986-87: founding and IPO. Paul Goldin and Arthur Sherman started the company in November 1986; it went public in August 1987 at roughly 3.5 cents a share.
Home shopping drove the business.By 1989, sales through the Home Shopping Network made up roughly half of revenue -- autographed jerseys, balls, photos, and cards sold live on cable TV, backed by the company's own certificates of authenticity.
Early-90s boom. The stock ran from pennies to about $45 a share by 1992, one of the best-performing NASDAQ stocks that year, as the company expanded into entertainment licensing (Star Trek, Star Wars, Elvis Presley memorabilia) on top of sports.
Peak and decline. Sales peaked around $108 million in 1994, the same year founder Paul Goldin died and his son Ken Goldin took over as CEO. Revenue fell to about $75 million by 1996 as the broader card and memorabilia market cooled.

The Classic Games connection

Score Board owned Classic Games, Inc., the company behind the Classic Draft Picks sets that pictured top prospects before their official rookie cards existed. Classic moved its operations to Score Board's Cherry Hill, New Jersey headquarters in 1994 as the two businesses consolidated, and Score Board wound Classic's card operations fully into the parent company around 1995. This is the direct link between Score Board and the trading-card side of the hobby -- it never made Score, Pinnacle, or Select cards, only Classic's draft-pick sets.

Autograph disputes and bankruptcy

COAs that raised eyebrows. While competitors increasingly used holograms and matched-numbering systems, Score Board relied mainly on a simple paper certificate of authenticity for its autographed memorabilia -- a format collectors and dealers came to view skeptically compared to later authentication standards.
The Kobe Bryant dispute.Score Board signed then-17-year-old Kobe Bryant to an autograph and memorabilia deal in 1996. A later bankruptcy-court dispute over unpaid autograph compensation became one of the more visible legal footnotes of the company's collapse.
Overextension. Costly ventures outside its core autograph business -- including licensing deals unrelated to sports -- added financial strain on top of a shrinking memorabilia and card market in the mid-1990s.
Chapter 11 in 1998. Score Board filed for bankruptcy in 1998, the same year Pinnacle Brands separately collapsed -- a coincidence of timing that has fed decades of confusion between the two unrelated companies.

Why this matters for collectors today

Don't confuse the two “Score” bankruptcies.If a source says “Score Board” owned Pinnacle Brands or made Score-branded cards, treat that as an error -- Pinnacle Brands (formerly Optigraphics, then Major League Marketing) was a separate Dallas-area card manufacturer with no ownership tie to Score Board; its assets went to Playoff, Inc. after its own 1998 bankruptcy, eventually becoming part of Panini.
Treat old Score Board COAs as a starting point, not proof. A paper certificate from a defunct company with no modern registry or lookup system carries little independent weight. Cross-check any Score Board-era autograph the way you would any unverified vintage signature -- see How to Tell If a Sports Card Autograph Is Real.
Classic cards, not Score cards.If you own a card connected to Score Board, it's almost certainly a Classic Games product (Draft Picks, trivia-game inserts) rather than anything branded Score, Pinnacle, or Select.