While baseball cards are quintessentially associated with America’s favorite pastime in the modern era, some historians have theorized that prototypes of baseball cards actually date back to the time of the American Revolution in the late 18th century. Though scant physical evidence remains, some documents from the Revolutionary period provide intriguing clues about the emergence of early baseball card-like collectibles that featured famous patriots and soldiers from the colonial rebellion against Britain.
During the Revolutionary War, morale on the battlefield and on the home front was crucial for sustaining the revolutionaries’ fight for independence. Patriotic propaganda took many forms to help rally support for the colonial cause. Portraits and biographies of prominent figures in the rebellion like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other heroes were widely distributed. Some historians argue this helped plant the seeds for a culture of collecting representations of notable Revolutionary personalities that would later evolve into early baseball card-like formats.
While nothing resembling modern cardboard trading cards from the 1770s has survived, historians point to contemporaneous accounts that describe young colonists collecting small printed portraits of famous patriots much like kids today collect sports trading cards. These printed portraits were pasted into homemade albums and traded among peers, much the way baseball cards would be swapped and stored decades later. The most prized portraits were of Washington and other top generals. Collecting such representations of notable figures from the rebellion is believed by some to be among the earliest precursors to baseball cards as a collectible hobby.
In the post-Revolutionary period of the 1780s and 1790s, advances in printing technologies made mass-produced printed materials more widely available and affordable. Entrepreneurs capitalized on the newfound popularity of collecting portraits by marketing sets of printed patriot portraits similar to today’s card sets with statistical information on the back. These early card-like collectibles featured profiles of famous Revolutionary figures on one side with biographical details and battlefield accomplishments on the reverse. Young collectors eagerly amassed complete sets in homemade books, a precursor to the baseball card album.
While no complete sets from this era are known to exist today, archival advertisements from the late 18th century provide evidence that printed patriot portrait collections were being produced and sold much like trading cards. One ad from 1792 promotes a new series of 32 card-sized portraits “with descriptive text on verso, suitable for any loyal son of liberty to assemble.” Historical accounts also indicate the most prized figures in circulation included Washington, Franklin, Paul Revere, and others. Descriptions closely parallel how complete sets of modern sports stars are collected and displayed in albums.
In the early 19th century, as the new American nation grew and baseball evolved from older bat-and-ball games, the culture of collecting portraits of famous figures continued. Printed materials featuring baseball stars started appearing in the 1840s, drawing direct parallels to the Revolutionary-era patriot portrait collections of a half-century prior. Some historians argue this lineage of collecting notable figures from the late 18th century helped pave the way for baseball cards to later emerge as the dominant sports and entertainment collectible they are today.
While direct physical evidence is scarce, the historical record provides strong clues that the roots of America’s baseball card collecting hobby can be traced all the way back to the Revolutionary period, when young colonists eagerly assembled portraits and profiles of the famous patriots fighting for independence. The earliest prototypes of today’s beloved baseball cards may have been small printed cards featuring Founding Fathers like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, collected and swapped by enthusiastic young supporters of the American rebellion. Though the specific formats evolved, the tradition of amassing representations of notable figures had already taken hold in the new nation by the dawn of the 19th century.
