The Beginning of Baseball Cards (BGHLI)
The tradition of baseball cards can be traced all the way back to the late 1800s when cigarette companies like American Tobacco Company began including cards featuring baseball players in their cigarette packs as a marketing gimmick. These early baseball cards came to be known by the acronym BGHLI, which stands for the first initial of each of the main cigarette companies that produced them – Beckett’s, Goodwin & Company, Helmet, Liebig and Imperial.
While today’s baseball cards focus primarily on statistics and photography, the earliest BGHLI cards from the late 1800s and very early 1900s contained much more basic information about the players such as their position and team affiliation. The images on these vintage cards were crude lithographs that bore little resemblance to the players they depicted. They ignited the collecting craze that still lives on today.
The Golden Age of BGHLI Cards
The years from the late 1910s through the early 1930s are considered the golden age of BGHLI baseball cards when production and quality reached their peak. During this time, the five major tobacco companies of BGHLI were all actively including baseball cards in their cigarettes. With so many packs being opened by smokers, it created a huge market for collectors to trade and build complete sets of players.
Some key milestones of the golden age of BGHLI cards include:
1916 – Cigarette companies begin using color lithography to print cards, greatly improving image quality and realism. Full bleed images without borders become the norm.
1918 – The first card featuring a player posing for a photo is released, starting the transition away from illustrations to photos.
1920s – Complete team and league sets become available as companies coordinate production. Statistics like batting average are added to backs of cards.
1930 – Goudey Gum Company enters the baseball card market with finely crafted cards that set a new high standard for quality printing and design.
1933 – BGHLI production starts to decline as tobacco companies feel backlash over targeting children. Goudey remains the top American producer through the 1930s.
Rise and Fall of the BGHLI Brand
Though the golden age ended in the 1930s, BGHLI cards continued to be produced in smaller numbers through the 1940s and 50s mainly by the Goodwin & Company division. Their dominance and reputation was already fading. Several factors contributed to BGHLI’s decline:
Health concerns – As links grew between smoking and cancer, tobacco companies wanted to distance from targeting youth.
Competition – Other gum and candy makers like Bowman and Topps entered the market.
Lost archives – Many early BGHLI records and archives were destroyed in fires or discarded over the decades.
Licensing issues – Modern players’ unions made exclusive licensing deals that shut out tobacco promotion of active ballplayers.
By the 1960s BGHLI was just a nostalgia brand without any new card production. In the collecting community it became known for its historic significance at the start of the industry rather than current releases. The BGHLI name lives on in the acronym used to refer to those pioneering cigarette card issues from baseball’s earliest decades.
Legacy and Value of BGHLI Cards
While no longer a prominent in-production brand, vintage BGHLI cards from the turn of the 20th century through the 1930s golden age remain hugely popular with collectors today. Prices for rare and coveted early issues regularly fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction. Some examples of high dollar BGHLI cards include:
1909 T206 Honus Wagner – Consistently the most valuable trading card in existence, with PSA 10 examples selling for over $1 million.
1914 Cracker Jack Wilt Chamberlain – One of about 50 known, it set a record at auction of $2.2 million in 2016.
1911 Imperial Tobacco Joe DiMaggio – A superb near-mint example brought in $657,250 at auction in 2016.
For historians, the early BGHLI issues are treasured as the original baseball cards that established the industry. They provide a window into the sport’s earliest eras before more extensive record keeping. The pioneering BGHLI brands got the ball rolling on a beloved hobby that now spans generations of collectors worldwide.
