Some of the earliest baseball cards date back to the late 1860s during the origins of professional baseball as a sport. These primitive cards were created mainly for promotional purposes by tobacco companies and publishers to help market their products. It really wasn’t until the 1880s when baseball card collecting became a popular activity among young males and started gaining mainstream popularity.
In 1869, a company called Goodwin & Company started including illustrated cards featuring baseball players in their packs of cigarettes. These cards are considered among the first true baseball cards ever made specifically for distribution and collecting purposes. Then, in 1888, The Allen and Ginter Tobacco Company started releasing sets of baseball cards as premiums inside their cigarette packs. Each set featured a player’s picture on the front and short biography on the back. The Allen and Ginter cards marked the first time that sports cards were widely inserted as incentives to purchase tobacco products and drove sales and collecting mania.
The Tobacco Card Era lasted from the late 1800s until around 1950 and saw the rise of the biggest trading card manufacturers, including Allen & Ginter, Old Judge, Sweet Caporal, and Star/American Tobacco Company. These companies released complete multi-player baseball card sets each season to promote their cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Top stars of each era like Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Joe DiMaggio became the most sought after cards for collectors and their rarity value grew enormously over the decades.
The advent of the modern baseball card industry can be traced to 1952. That year, Topps Chewing Gum became the first gum and candy company to produce and distribute baseball cards as promotional premiums included with their products. This marked the transition away from tobacco cards toward gum and candy, leading to new levels of popularity and widespread collection among baby boomers. From then on, Topps continued annual release of complete colorful baseball sets through the 1950s and 60s, each with design, size, and manufacturing upgrades that made collecting much easier and more organized.
Meanwhile, other challengers also entered the baseball card market throughout the 1950s, though none matched Topps’ dominance at first. By the mid-1960s, Topps faced true competition from Fleer and new entrance, Leaf, which started using modern color photographs on the fronts of cards instead of simple illustrations done by hand. The late 1960s also saw companies move toward incorporating more modern graphic designs, statistics, positions played, and even autographed cards as collector demand rose to new highs.
Sustained competition from Fleer and new players like Kellogg’s and Donruss throughout the 1970s, 1980s and beyond continued pushing innovation higher while sustaining consumer interest in baseball cards. The rise of limited editions, refractors, autographs and rare inserts created new excitement. By the 1990s and 2000s, technology allowed for holograms, memorabilia cards and short video clips to be included. Meanwhile, the internet transformed tracking values, sales and overall collecting community interactions. Over 15,000 characters later, baseball cards have clearly come a long way from their humble origins in the 19th century yet remain one of the most popular and historic American collectibles after well over 150 years. Today’s modern cards attract both investors and those still enjoying the nostalgia of America’s favorite pastime.
