The tradition of collecting and trading baseball cards dates back to the late 1800s when cigarette and tobacco companies began including baseball cards as promotional inserts in their products. Throughout the early 1900s, companies like American Tobacco Company, Goodwin & Company, and American Caramel Company produced and distributed millions of baseball cards to customers. For many young fans living outside major league cities, accessing and trading these coveted cards could be difficult.
This began to change in the 1950s as the hobby of baseball card collecting started to explode in popularity across the United States, fueled by TV broadcasts that brought the national pastime into living rooms across America. While regional drug stores and specialty shops sold wax packs and boxes of the latest baseball cards, the limited distribution meant that not every kid had equal access. It was during this era that several entrepreneurs came up with the innovative idea of direct baseball card mail order clubs that helped fuel the booming hobby and democratized the collecting experience.
One of the earliest and most prominent baseball card mail order clubs was started in 1953 by Joel Shapiro, known as the “King of Baseball Cards.” Based in Brooklyn, New York, Shapiro’s Sportscard Guarantee Service allowed anyone to join his club and receive monthly shipments of assorted baseball cards straight to their mailbox. For an annual fee of just $2, members received 12 packages over the course of a year containing 30-50 random baseball cards from Shapiro’s vast inventory. The cards covered both current seasons as well as vintage issues dating back to the tobacco era.
Shapiro’s innovative club was a huge hit with collectors across the country hungry for new cards to add to their collections. Within a few years, he had signed up tens of thousands of members and was shipping out hundreds of thousands of cards each month. His success helped inspire copycats and competitors to launch their own baseball card of the month clubs. One such club was Sportscard Digest, started in 1960 by Bill Haber out of his parents’ basement in Brooklyn. Like Shapiro, Haber offered monthly shipments of assorted baseball cards to subscribers. His club grew rapidly as it tapped into the booming market.
In the 1960s, two brothers from Maryland, Phil and Bill Taylor, took the baseball card mail order club model to new heights with their Sportscard Club of America. Based in Baltimore, the Taylors offered memberships starting at just $3 for 6 monthly packages containing 60-100 random baseball cards in each shipment. Within a few years, they had signed up over 100,000 members, making their club one of the largest and most successful in the country. Like their competitors, the Taylors sourced cards from their extensive inventory that spanned both current seasons and vintage issues.
The success and popularity of baseball card mail order clubs exploded in the late 1960s as the hobby reached new levels of fandom and collecting interest. By this point, there were dozens of competing clubs all vying for a share of the growing market. In addition to the established names like Shapiro, Haber, and the Taylors, many new operators launched clubs out of their homes or local shops. Some of the larger clubs included Sportflics out of New York, which had over 200,000 members at its peak, and Bowman Gum’s Baseball Card Club that boasted a membership of over 500,000 collectors by the early 1970s.
For a monthly, quarterly, or annual fee ranging from $2 to $10, depending on the club, young fans could receive curated shipments of baseball cards delivered straight to their mailbox. This allowed anyone, no matter where they lived, to join in on the booming hobby and build their collections. The cards included in the packages covered the entire spectrum from current rookie stars to legendary players of the past. Subscribers looked forward to each new package, not knowing which players or coveted vintage cards they might receive. The mail order clubs helped democratize the hobby and brought the joy of collecting baseball cards to thousands of new fans across the United States.
While regional and national card shops continued to sell packs and boxes, the baseball card mail order clubs remained extremely popular well into the 1970s and 1980s. By this point, membership in the largest clubs numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The direct baseball card market began facing new challenges as the speculative bubble of the late 1980s card boom started to burst. Many of the smaller clubs folded amidst industry consolidation and changing collecting trends that favored chasing specific star players over assembling general collections.
Two of the longest surviving baseball card mail order clubs were Sportflics, which ceased operations in 1990 after over 30 years in business, and the Sportscard Club of America, which finally closed its doors in 1996 after four decades of monthly mailings. Their demise marked the end of an era when collecting cards was primarily a mailbox hobby. While online retailers like eBay later helped fuel renewed interest, the golden age of baseball card mail order clubs in many ways represented the pinnacle of direct-to-consumer participation in the beloved pastime of collecting baseball’s finest on cardboard. Their innovative monthly membership models democratized the hobby and brought untold joy to generations of young fans across the country.
