Baseball cards have been a beloved hobby and pastime for generations of fans across North America. In Saskatoon, baseball cards have a rich history dating back to the early 1900s when the first baseball cards began appearing in cigarette packs and bubble gum packages. While the popularity of collecting baseball cards has waxed and waned over the decades, there remains a dedicated community of collectors in Saskatoon who appreciate these nostalgic pieces of sports memorabilia.
Some of the earliest baseball cards produced featured stars from the early professional leagues like the National League and American League. In the early 20th century, several tobacco companies like American Tobacco Company and Fleer started inserting baseball cards as incentives to purchase their products. This helped spark the baseball card craze across Canada and the United States. As professional baseball grew in popularity in the Prairies, baseball cards also gained fans in cities like Saskatoon. Many lifelong collectors today in their 70s and 80s still have treasured cards from sets produced in the 1910s and 1920s featuring legends like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson.
In the post-World War 2 era as the population of Saskatoon boomed, so too did the interest among young fans in collecting cards. Iconic sets from the 1950s like Topps and Bowman are highly sought after today. Hometown heroes like George Selkirk who played for the original Washington Senators and later coached the minor league Saskatoon Hilltops, appeared in many sets during his playing days. The late 1950s/early 1960s also saw the rise of Canadian brands like O-Pee-Chee which produced essentially the same cards as Topps but substituted American players with Canadian ones to appeal to the Canadian market. These vintage O-Pee-Chee cards are of particular interest to collectors in Saskatoon.
The 1970s represented the golden age of baseball card collecting in Saskatoon. With the opening of multiple card shops in the city, kids could easily trade and purchase packs, boxes, and individual cards of their favorite players. Popular annual sets from Topps, Fleer, and Donruss featured the biggest stars of the era like Reggie Jackson, Nolan Ryan, and Steve Garvey. Expos greats like Gary Carter and Andre Dawson also gained followings among collectors in Western Canada. Card shows began popping up on weekends where hundreds of collectors would gather at community halls or convention centers to buy, sell, and trade with vendors and each other.
The 1980s saw the rise of expensive premium cards like Topps Traded, Update sets, and Fleer/Donruss/Score update sets. Insert cards with short prints and serial numbers of star players also became highly coveted. Icons like Wayne Gretzky even had their own eponymous card sets as they dominated on the ice. The overproduction of cards in the late 80s caused a crash that led to the closing of many local card shops. Many collectors scaled back but a core remained. The 1990s brought the baseball card industry back with sets focused on rookies and stars of the steroid era like Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, and Mark McGwire.
In the 2000s, collecting transitioned more to the internet with online communities, auctions, and deal-making replacing the bustle of card shops and shows. The rise of memorabilia cards with game-used pieces of uniforms also captivated collectors. The 2008 recession again caused financial difficulties for the industry. In Saskatoon, only a handful of dedicated local card shops survived like The Sport Shack and Collector’s Edge which helped maintain the local collector community. The 2010s saw renewed interest particularly in vintage cards as the hobby began to be seen more as an investment and source of nostalgia than solely for kids.
Today in Saskatoon, while online sales and nationwide groups dominate, there remains an active local scene. Monthly meetings are held by the Saskatchewan Sports Card Collectors Club where a couple dozen members will meet to socialize, buy and sell, and discuss the latest happenings in the hobby. Two large annual card shows are held that draw collectors from across the Prairies. Vintage shops and antique malls often have boxes of old unsorted cards that provide opportunities for finding valuable gems. And local card shops still do brisk online and in-person sales on new releases, especially for the city’s beloved Blue Jays. As long as there are fans of baseball in Saskatoon, the rich tradition of collecting its cardboard history is sure to continue.
Baseball cards have been an integral part of sports fandom and childhood memories for generations of Saskatoon residents. While trends and tastes have changed over decades, the nostalgia and love of the game that cards represent has kept the hobby going. For local collectors, finding those elusive vintage cards of hometown heroes or Canadian stars provides immense pride and joy. And in an era of digital highlights and statistics, these tangible remnants of baseball history remain treasured artifacts that tell the human stories behind the box scores.
