In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many American children first became acquainted with baseball through the baseball cards that came packaged with sticks of chewing gum. Two of the most famous brands that included baseball cards as a marketing promotion were Beeman’s Pepsin Gum and Goudey Gum Company.
Beeman’s Pepsin Gum originated in New Jersey in the 1880s. It was a very popular stick of chewing gum, known for its distinctive pink wrapper. In the 1890s, Beeman’s began including small pictures of baseball players on some of their gum wrappers as a way to help market the brand to young baseball fans. These early baseball cards were simply small cardboard advertisements pasted onto or printed directly on the pink gum wrappers. They featured active major league players and provided statistics and information to teach children about the modern game of baseball.
In the early 1900s, Beeman’s discontinued using player images directly on their gum wrappers. They began inserting whole baseball cards – separate cardboard pieces not attached to the gum wrapper – inside some packs of their pink sticks of gum. These were the earliest true standalone baseball cards packaged with gum. They were typically smaller than modern cards, often just over 2 inches wide, and featured an image of a single player on the front with stats or a small biography on the back. Beeman’s gum with included baseball cards remained popular with children through the 1910s.
The most famous early baseball card company, however, was the Goudey Gum Company, based in Boston. In 1913, they began including baseball cards with some packs of their popular Goudey Gum. The Goudey cards were significantly larger than earlier baseball cards, measuring approximately 3 × 5 inches each. This established the standard size that would be used in baseball cards for decades. The 1913 series featured 161 total cards, each with a color image of an individual player on the front. On the back was usually a shorter biography and the player’s vital stats.
Goudey Gum continued to include new series of baseball cards in their gum packs annually through the mid-1910s. Their 1915 and 1917 series stood out for introducing color tinting and color images on some cards for the first time. The vivid color portraits and sleek design of Goudey cards helped turn them into coveted collectibles for children across America. Youngsters would eagerly snap the gum and trade or save the cards to assemble complete sets.
In the 1920s and 30s, several other chewing gum companies followed Goudey’s lead in packaging baseball cards to boost gum sales. Some of the most notable included Diamond Gum, Victor Gum, Fleming’s Cigarettes & Gum Company, and Goodies Gum Company. Each included their own original baseball card sets right in gum wrappers or packs. Titles like “Diamond Stars”, “Victor All-Americans”, and “Fleer Pros” featured even more vivid color images of rising young stars and established greats of the time like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
By the late 1930s, the baseball card bubble began to pop as kids had amassed huge collections and the novelty wore off. Companies like Topps Chewing Gum would reignite nationwide childhood obsession when they began regular annual baseball card releases after WWII in 1951. The long, rich tradition of discovering baseball through the surprise packs of a stick of chewing gum had endured for over 70 years in America, leaving behind a legacy of collectible cardboard today valued in the billions. For generations of children between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, a baseball card inside that stick of pink Beeman’s Pepsin Gum or green pack of Goudey may have planted their very first seeds of fandom for America’s pastime.