A brief history of baseball cards

This subject is really hard to condense but I think it is a very interesting topic that the general public knows little about.

Believe it or not, baseball cards were printed just before and after the civil war as cabinet cards or “cart de visite,” which was smaller than the cabinet card. These pictures are very rare and often feature a young boy wearing a uniform and holding a ball and bat. These cards were not commercially produced and were just a family memento.

The first commercial cards were produced by Peck and Snyder, who used them as advertisements for their sports products. The advertisement would be on one side and a picture of a baseball team on the other. These cards are often referred to as trade cards as this was a popular tool of the trade, which is in a collectible field on its own. You can find these trade cards that feature all kinds of advertisements from everything from thread to soap and pictures of presidents, birds or flowers on the other side.

In the mid 1880s baseball cards began to be mass produced and primarily advertised tobacco products. The card was a premium and also stiffened the cigarette packs. These cards were smaller than the cards of today and a huge hit. By the end of that decade there was basically only one company called the American Tobacco Company, which no longer saw a need to add advertisement cards to their products.

What is often referred to as “The Golden Age” period of baseball cards occurred when the U.S. Government broke up the American Tobacco Company into many small companies. These smaller companies resumed their tobacco advertising cards, which are referred to as the T205 and T206 cards that were quite beautiful, still small and had a white border. This period from 1909-1915 is when the most valuable cards were printed by not only tobacco companies but also candy companies. Featured players of the era were Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Honus Wagner.

When America became involved in World War I, tobacco companies quit producing the baseball cards and the candy and gum companies picked up the slack. These cards were not quite as nice and strip cards were introduced which was a group of advertising card inserts that were perforated and could be pulled out and separated.

In the 1930s the Goudey Gum Company of Boston produced another popular set of baseball cards with rich colors. National Chicle and Delong Gum got on the band wagon and produced their own cards to compete with Goudey and players of this era were Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Gum, Inc. started a line of cards called Play Ball that featured Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio.

What is considered to be the “Modern Age” of baseball card collectibles started in the late 1940’s after World War II. Bowman Gum started producing the baseball cards in the size we are now familiar with. They started printing them in black and white but quickly switched over to color printing as the packs of card with a gum stick quickly flew off the shelves. They also started producing sets of cards that featured baseball greats such as Micky Mantle and Willie Mays.

Leaf also produced popular sets and Topps entered the baseball card/gum stick market in the early 1950’s and began to dominate the market. In fact, Topps bought Bowman Gum who was their major competition and pretty much were the only game in town until 1980.

During that period there were also various baseball cards and tokens produced for local markets and products like cereal and hotdogs. Several test issue cards and products were tried and some of those are quite valuable as well.

When the courts ruled against the Topps Monopoly in 1980, Fleer and Donruss began to mass produce baseball cards. The flooding of the market by those companies actually brought down that collectible market in a bad way! What makes something valuable is rarity.

America was caught up in the “collectible” craze which included collector’s plates, beanie babies, dolls and baseball cards. People were buying boxes of baseball cards in bulk thinking they could retire off the proceeds one day!

Now we these items are ending up in estate sales and auctions and they are worth a small fraction of what the owners paid for them. There are lots of websites and books dedicated to baseball card collecting with so much more detailed information available. Check it out for yourself and happy collecting!

Jillinda Falen has been buying and selling antiques for over 27 years. She is a licensed REALTOR and estate liquidation specialist. You can contact here through the Houston Home Journal or via email at falen@windstream.net.

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