While baseball cards are most closely associated with America’s favorite pastime of baseball, football has also had its share of representation in the collecting card industry over the years. NFL football players have been featured on regional tobacco cards since the early 1930s and gained wider distribution on modern cards beginning in the 1960s as the popularity of professional football exploded across the country.
One of the earliest known issues to include NFL players was the 1932-33 Hawthorne Cigarettes set. This regional Iowa-based tobacco issue included a small selection of stars from the league’s earliest era like Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski. Around this same time period, other regional tobacco brands produced football cards as giveaways or premiums with their packs of cigarettes. Distribution was limited and production runs tended to be short, making these early NFL cards quite scarce and expensive to collectors today.
The first major nationwide NFL release came in 1961 courtesy of Topps with their inaugural “Football Cards” set. Featuring 144 total cards including players, teams and coaches, this early Topps offering helped kickstart the sports card boom for professional football. Star rookies like Joe Namath and Gale Sayers got their first cards in this vibrantly colored issue. Subsequent Topps NFL football sets followed annually through the decades and remains the longest continuous NFL card brand.
In the 1970s, competition heated up as Fleer entered the sports card market. This upstart brand took on Topps and produced some of the most iconic football card designs still coveted today like the “Action All Stars” and “Super Stars” subsets highlighting the biggest player names. Fleer’s photography and art styles tended to be bolder and flashier compared to Topps’ cleaner designs during this period. Both companies jockeyed for licensing deals and insertion rights in packaged products to drive sales of their annual NFL sets.
The 1980s saw card collecting reach new heights in popularity, driven in large part by the rise of more lucrative NFL player contracts and careers. Stars like Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Walter Payton achieved unprecedented fame and recognition through constant television broadcast exposure. This in turn boosted interest and demand for their collectible football cards. Premium rookie and star cards from the era sell for thousands of dollars in gem mint condition today. Major league sets from Topps, Fleer and newcomer Donruss reached record print runs but have also become better long term investments.
In 1989, Upper Deck revolutionized the modern sports card industry when it debuted with innovative graphic designs, higher quality card stock/paper and more advanced hologram technology aimed at foiling counterfeiters. The company paid huge licensing fees to gain NFL rights and inserted premium boxes and packs containing serially numbered “UD Ultimate Collection” cards of the elite players. Overnight, Upper Deck cards brought significant premiums over the traditional brands and demonstrated fans’ willingness to pay top dollar for high-end, limited card products of their on-field heroes. Their innovations redefined the “sportscard” and opened the door for countless parallels, autograph and memorabilia subsets in following decades.
In the internet age of the 1990s, the values of vintage NFL stars shot up as die-hard collectors from all 50 states could now trade and complete vintage or rookie sets with ease through online message boards. At the same time, tremendous televised talent like Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith, Steve Young and Brett Favre kept fans flocking to football card packs in pursuit of the rookies and standouts of each new season. Upper Deck, Topps, Leaf and Playoff paralleled the league’s rising popularity with insert sets celebrating milestones, stadiums, rivalries and more novel premium concepts. The Super Bowl was truly becoming America’s biggest annual sporting event.
The 21st century collector experience has been shaped by memorabilia and autograph cards paralleling the memorabilia explosion across all sports. Exquisite rookie and star “patch” or uniform fabric cards have emerged as the top section chasers while numbered autographs from all eras dominate internet auction sales. In today’s NFL, stars like Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and Saquon Barkley achieve massive popularity that carries incredible card value as enthusiastic collectors pursue all stages of a champion’s career. High-dollar auctions pit deep pocketed investors against dedicated fans chasing “the one that got away.”
Challenges remain as manufacturers struggle with counterfeiting operations and influences of the gambling collectibles industry. Skyrocketing player salaries along with shrinking physicalprint runs force values prohibitively high for casual collectors. New digital trading platforms are helping expand the hobby to a whole new generation by offering lower entry price points and engaging online communities. As long as the NFL reigns as the most viewed sports league on television, there will remain robust interest in owning pieces of the iconic players and moments that fans experience on game day through football collectibles. The gridiron car culture shows no signs of fading away anytime soon regardless of ups and downs in the inherent investment aspect of the cards themselves over time.
While modest regional beginnings showcasing early NFL stars of the 1930s, football cards truly took off nationwide in the post-World War 2 sports boom of the 1960s led by pioneering brands like Topps. Competition and creative innovations steadily increased collecting passion through the decades as television magnified popular heroes. Memorabilia parallels and star rookies/quarterbacks especially dominate modern values in a hobby that remains tightly intertwined with America’s most-watched pro sport for both casual and avid collectors alike despite ongoing challenges in the evolving marketplace.
