The Ginter baseball card set is one of the earliest and most historic sets in the early years of baseball card collecting and production. Issued annually from 1887 to 1891 by the Allen & Ginter Tobacco Company of Richmond, Virginia, the Ginter set helped kickstart the baseball card craze that became a mainstream hobby by the late 19th century.
Allen & Ginter was a leading tobacco manufacturer in the late 19th century United States. Like many tobacco firms of the time, they began including premium inserts in their cigarette and chewing tobacco packages to advertise and promote their brands. These premiums ranged from pieces of art, pieces of china, and other novelty items. In 1887, they had the novel idea to include small lithographed cards featuring images of notable baseball players as premiums.
This was one of the earliest genuine baseball card sets. Some contend the 1886 N172 Old Judge tobacco cards may have preceded Ginter as the first true baseball card set. However, Ginter is widely credited as being the first intentionally produced and distributed baseball card series. The cards quickly proved very popular with consumers, especially young boys who collected and traded the cards depicting their favorite ballplayers. This helped tremendously to spread interest and fandom of professional baseball across the United States.
The Ginter cards were issued as small rectangular pieces of grey cardboard measuring approximately 2 x 3 inches each. They featured colorful lithographic images of individual baseball players from both the National League and American Association on the front. The backs were left blank. Production quality was generally very high for the late 19th century. Each card was neatly trimmed and included the player’s name and team neatly printed along the bottom in patriotic red, white, and blue colors.
The 1887 inaugural Ginter set featured 29 different players. The biggest stars of the day like Cap Anson, Jim O’Rourke, Tim Keefe and Dan Brouthers were all represented. The designs were bright and bold in typically Victorian style. Many of the earliest Ginter cards from 1887 are now extremely rare and valuable, with only a handful known to still exist in collectors’ hands today in decent condition.
Ginter would issue new baseball card sets each year running from 1887 through 1891. The player selection and roster evolved and expanded each season to keep up with the fast-changing rosters and player movements in the early professional baseball leagues. By 1891, the final Ginter baseball card set ballooned to an immense 118 different baseball heroes featured. This massive checklist made it the largest and most complete baseball card set issued at that time.
In addition to baseball players, the later Ginter sets also included cards featuring other sports and celebrity figures of the day. Examples include boxers, cricketers, and even actors and poets. This diverse checklist expanded the overall appeal and helped Ginter cards remain one of the most popular premium goods inserted in tobacco products well into the early 1890s.
Unfortunately for collectors today, the survival rate of intact Ginter sets over the past 125+ years has been quite low compared to later 19th century tobacco era issues. The flimsy cardboard stock used and constant handling as playthings for young collectors made the cards quite perishable. Many were inevitably lost, thrown away, or destroyed over the decades. As a result, examples of complete original Ginter sets from any issue year between 1887-1891 are now amongst the most rare and coveted collections in the entire world of sports memorabilia.
For individual card collectors, high grade Ginter rookies and stars from the late 1880s are essentially unattainable treasures today. Examples that do still exist in even moderately preserved condition almost always reside in important museum collections or the guarded collections of elite tycoon collectors. Prices for single rare Ginter cards routinely command six figure sums and well into the millions of dollars for the most desirable specimens when they do very rarely become available on the open market.
Despite the immense rarity and value of intact Ginter baseball cards and sets today, their true historical importance still greatly outweighs mere monetary worth. They were truly a pioneering creation that helped plant the seeds of baseball card fandom and provided some of the earliest iconic baseball hero imagery ever produced for young collectors. With such a brief print run and distribution period over 130 years ago, it’s remarkable any Ginter cards have survived at all. Their survival is a tribute to both their appeal as collectibles and importance as some of the first baseball cards ever made.
While Allen & Ginter Tobacco Company’s production of baseball cards inserted in their products was relatively brief from 1887 to 1891, the Ginter baseball card sets stand as hugely important historical artifacts. They helped introduce and spread interest in collecting baseball players as memorabilia and fueled the nascent baseball card craze. Even over a century later, complete original Ginter sets and individual high grade cards remain amongst the rarest and most prized possessions in any serious baseball memorabilia or card collection due to their immense historical significance as pioneers of the hobby.
