In the late 1880s through the early 20th century, it was very common for chewing gum manufacturers to include baseball cards as an incentive inside their chewing gum packaging. This helped drive gum sales among young baseball fans while also serving as an early collectible for kids. Some of the most famous gum brands that included baseball cards were Topps, Bowman, and Bazooka.
Topps Chewing Gum first started including baseball cards in their product in 1951 and would become the dominant brand for modern baseball cards throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Decades earlier in the late 1800s/early 1900s, other gum brands laid the groundwork. For example, American Caramel Company produced cigarette cards in the 1890s that featured baseball players. It wasn’t until the 1900s that true baseball cards designed for collecting began regularly appearing inside gum wrappers and packaging.
One of the earliest gum brands known to regularly include baseball cards was Leaf Candy Company, based in Brooklyn, New York. In 1913, Leaf began producing gumballs that came wrapped in foil with cardboard discs advertising the gum inside. These early Leaf “cards” contained stats and photos of major league players on one side and an ad for Leaf gum on the reverse. A few years later in 1915, the more traditional cardboard baseball cards we now envision started coming inside Leaf gum packages.
Other early 20th century gum producers that pioneered the baseball card incentive model included Boston American League Baseball Club and its Beeman’s Pepsin Gum. In 1915, Beeman’s began including stats-backed cardboard cards of Red Sox players inside small gum packages. Over in Chicago, American Caramel Company produced Corky Caramel gum packs with cards from 1916-1917, focusing on the hometown Chicago Cubs and White Sox.
By far the most legendary early baseball gum brand was Goudey Gum Company of Boston. From 1905 to 1956, Goudey manufactured high-quality stick chewing gums that came packaged with all sorts of trading cards and collectibles to entice young customers. Some of their most iconic early releases included Goudey Sport Kings (1905-1930), Goudey Craze (1915), and their most famous release – Goudey Baseball (1933 and another run from 1952-1956).
The 1933 Goudey Baseball cards set the standard for design and production quality that later card issues strove to match. Featuring 161 total cards over multiple series releases, the 1933 Goudey set highlighted top stars like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx. The durable cardboard stock and crisp photographs made these early cards highly collectible even at the time. In fact, Goudey is credited alongside American Caramel Company as helping establish the modern ballplayer photography tradition on baseball cards starting in the early 20th century.
Virtually every iconic early-to-mid 20th century American gum brand included baseball cards as incentives at some point – usually packaged individually inside fresh gum sticks. Chewing gum was an affordable childhood indulgence, and baseball cards turned the product into a small collectible package that drove repeat purchases. Brands like Leaf, Beeman’s, Corky Caramel, and most famously – Goudey helped pave the way for the golden era of Topps baseball cards to come starting in the post-World War II period of the 1950s and beyond. The symbiotic relationship between gum sticks and baseball cards helped grow an entire multi-billion dollar collectibles industry in the decades to follow.
