Baseball cards have been an integral part of American culture for over a century. While the major card companies like Topps, Bowman, and Fleer produced cards featuring major league players that were collected nationwide, some smaller regional companies also emerged to serve local baseball card collecting communities. One such company was Glenway Baseball Card Company, located in the small town of Glenway, Kentucky.
Glenway has a rich baseball history dating back to the early 1900s. Amateur and semi-pro baseball teams have always been a source of pride and entertainment for the town. In the late 1940s, two brothers in Glenway – Harry and Jim Thompson – had the idea to produce low-cost baseball cards featuring local players and teams as a fun souvenir for fans to remember the season by. They founded the Glenway Baseball Card Company in 1948, printing their first set of cards featuring the 1948 rosters of Glenway’s three amateur teams – the Glenway Giants, Glenway A’s, and Glenway Reds.
The cards were an immediate hit in Glenway and surrounding areas. Fans loved being able to collect cards of the players they watched every weekend at the local ballpark. Harry and Jim produced new sets each year through the 1950s, gradually expanding coverage to include more semi-pro teams from nearby small towns. Production remained small, usually printing runs of only a few hundred sets per year just to meet local demand. Cards were sold for a nickel per pack directly from the Thompson brothers’ store in downtown Glenway.
In the late 1950s, Glenway Baseball Card Company began gaining more recognition outside the local area as word spread of their unique niche product. Fans from as far away as Louisville and Lexington started requesting the cards. To meet this growing demand, production increased to around 1,000 sets per year by 1960. New distribution deals were also struck with local hobby shops and drug stores in those larger towns. This helped turn Glenway Baseball Cards into a modest regional success story.
The 1960s brought many changes for the company. Younger collectors were now getting into the hobby on a bigger scale with the rise of the wider sports card industry led by Topps. To keep up, the Thompson brothers began including more statistics and biographical information on the cards alongside just the simple black-and-white player photos of prior years. Color was also introduced in 1964. Sets grew larger each season to around 50-75 cards as they expanded coverage to additional nearby amateur and semi-pro leagues.
In 1967, a major milestone was reached when the Thompsons scored licensing deals to produce official minor league sets for the Class A Kentucky State League and Class D Appalachian League. This opened up their card coverage possibilities tremendously. Over the next few seasons, they produced some of the most comprehensive minor league sets of the time featuring not just the local affiliates but all teams in those leagues. Distribution grew to cover much of Kentucky and parts of surrounding states. Glenway Baseball Cards were now a nationally recognized brand among minor league card collectors.
The rise of the sports card conglomerates proved challenging for smaller independent operations through the 1970s. Topps gained exclusive major and minor league player rights, squeezing out unlicensed competitors. Higher production costs also cut into Glenway’s profits. After 30 successful years, Harry and Jim Thompson made the difficult choice to retire the Glenway Baseball Card Company name in 1978. They sold off their remaining inventory and equipment. For a time it seemed the end of an era for baseball cards in Glenway.
But in 1990, local historian and lifelong Glenway resident Bill Duvall decided to revive the tradition. He founded Glenway Vintage Baseball Cards to produce reprint sets of some of the classic 1950s-70s Glenway Baseball Card issues that had become highly sought after collectibles. Using the original negatives, plates and layouts he was able to acquire from the Thompson family, Duvall reproduced sets in the same style on vintage-style paper stock. While they don’t carry the same value as originals, the reprints have helped preserve the legacy of Glenway’s pioneering role in the baseball card industry for future generations.
To this day, original Glenway Baseball Cards remain a prized find among dedicated regional hobbyists and minor league card collectors. Their unique documentation of grassroots baseball history from small town Kentucky endures as a cherished niche in the wider world of sports memorabilia. Through the dedication of the Thompson brothers and efforts like Duvall’s reprints, the tradition lives on in Glenway.