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About Baseball Cards

About Baseball Cards

A popular type of trading card, baseball cards have one or more baseball player(s) and are typically printed on card stock or plastic. Baseball cards may also feature teams or stadiums.
History of Baseball Cards

History of Baseball Cards

Prior to the 1900s, baseball cards looked much different than they do today. Called Cabinet Cards, most of these 4x6 cards contained team portraits. Peck and Snyder published the first official baseball cards in the 1860s. A notable card from Peck and Snyder includes the first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Over twenty years later, tobacco cards became popular and were found in cigarette packs distributed by Goodwin Tobacco and later other cigarette brands. Tobacco cards eventually evolved to a white border surrounding the lithograph of a player with an advertisement for the tobacco company on the other side. The most notable early card is The Honus Wagner.

After the Great Depression, card packs with a piece of gum were introduced, targeting a younger audience. Bowman cards re-entered the scene in the late 1940’s with their 1948 Bowman Baseball Set. Leaf was another big player in the industry during this time producing baseball color rookie cards for players such as Jackie Robinson. In 1951, Bowman caught up with Leaf by introducing their own set of color baseball cards. During the same year, Topps Gum Company officially joined the baseball card market selling baseball cards that were also a card game to switch to traditional baseball cards a year later. Their 1952 set was designed by Sy Berger, not knowing that his design would become the standard baseball card format. Topps went on to buy Bowman for 200,000 and was the only manufacturer to produce baseball cards for 25 years.

In the 1980s-1990s, baseball cards were overproduced and this period of time in baseball card history is called the “Junk card era.” Modern baseball cards lean towards a lottery system, where collectors hope for a “hit,” or rare card. In the 2020s, baseball cards, along with sports cards in general, became of interest to collectors and investors.
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