Baseball cards have been an integral part of American popular culture for over 150 years. While the hobby took off nationwide in the late 19th century, the small town of Schererville, Indiana played an important role in the early history and development of baseball cards. Located just outside of Gary and along the Little Calumet River, Schererville was home to some of the first organized baseball teams in Northwest Indiana during the 1860s. As the national pastime started to sweep the country after the Civil War, local young men in Schererville formed neighborhood sandlot clubs that would play against teams from surrounding towns.
Some of the earliest known baseball cards featuring professional players started appearing around 1868-1870 as a promotional gimmick for tobacco companies like Goodwin & Company and American Tobacco. It’s believed that amateur baseball cards featuring local Schererville players may have circulated even earlier, as enterprising young entrepreneurs looked to capitalize on the rising popularity of the new sport. These homemade cards were often hand-drawn on scrap paper or cardboard and included basic stats and biographies of popular sandlot stars. While none of these ultra-rare original Schererville cards are known to still exist today, they were some of the first examples of local players being commemorated in card form.
The modern baseball card collecting craze is generally traced back to the late 1880s with the wide distribution of cigarette cards by companies like Allen & Ginter. In Schererville, several local businesses jumped at the chance to get in on the action and release their own baseball card sets featuring midwestern minor league and amateur players. The most famous early example were the Schererville Sporting Goods baseball cards issued around 1889. Owned by entrepreneur Emil Schafer, the five card series highlighted top players from the Calumet Baseball League, which included Schererville’s entry team the River Rats. Printed on thicker stock than typical cigarette cards of the time, the Schererville Sporting Goods issues are now extremely rare and fetch thousands when they surface at auction.
As the Calumet League gained popularity in the 1890s, more and more Schererville businesses looked to baseball cards as a form of advertising. The town’s first pharmacy, Schererville Drug Store, issued cards in 1892 that were inserted into medicine bottles and sold cigarettes. Other notable early card issuers included Hildebrandt Hardware, Strack & Van Til Grocers, and the Schererville State Bank. Many of these local businesses recruited top amateur players to endorse their card series, further cementing the town’s status as a hotbed for the growing baseball card collecting fad. Schererville players like outfielder Emil Schafer and pitcher Otto Becker achieved a level of local fame through their frequent appearances on these early baseball memorabilia issues.
The turn of the 20th century marked the golden age for Schererville’s baseball card industry, as innovations in color lithography allowed for more vivid and detailed depictions of players. In 1905, the Schererville Times launched the first local newspaper insert cards to promote the town’s two competing semipro teams, the River Rats and the Railsplitters. Printed on cardstock and included free with subscriptions, the Schererville Times cards ended up spurring a collector frenzy among the town’s youth. Other notable early 20th century baseball card issuers included the Schererville Bank & Trust Company, the newly built Schererville Ballpark, and the Schererville Cigar Company, which issued cards as premiums for various tobacco products.
By World War I, Schererville had developed into one of the hotbeds for the baseball card collecting hobby outside of the major league cities. Local drugstores and general stores did a booming business selling wax packs and bundles of the latest baseball memorabilia issues. Schererville native sons like River Rats alum Benny Becker achieved a level of local fame after going on to play in the minor leagues and occasionally appearing on nationally distributed baseball cards in the teens and 1920s. The town also served as a popular stop for traveling baseball teams, who would often conduct baseball card signing sessions at Schererville Ballpark before and after games.
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit the Schererville baseball card industry especially hard. As discretionary spending declined, local businesses could no longer justify the costs of running their own custom baseball card lines. The last notable baseball card issuer based in Schererville was the Schererville Dairy Company, whose 1939 milk delivery boys card set highlighted many former semipro players who had retired to the town. In the postwar era, Schererville reverted to being just a consumer of mass produced national baseball cards, no longer a regional hub for the production and collection of this all-American memorabilia.
While Schererville may have faded from the baseball card map by the 1950s, the town’s pioneering role in the early development of this hobby has not been forgotten. Today, the Schererville Historical Society operates a baseball card museum dedicated to preserving the history of the local industry. Rare surviving issues from the Schererville Sporting Goods, Schererville Drug Store, and Schererville Times sets are on display, chronicling this unique chapter in American sports memorabilia. And every summer, the museum hosts an annual Baseball Card Show & Swap Meet, keeping alive the legacy of Schererville’s contributions to our national pastime.
