Mt. Juliet Baseball Cards: A Brief History
Baseball cards have long been a passion for many collectors across the United States. Few realize that one of the earliest and most comprehensive collections originated right here in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. Beginning in the late 1880s, local businessman and sports enthusiast James Franklin began amassing what would become one of the most valuable troves of early baseball memorabilia in the world. His collection of Mt. Juliet baseball cards would help document the early years of America’s pastime and preserve the histories of countless ballplayers.

Franklin’s interest in baseball arose during his youth in the post-Civil War era. Born in 1866, he came of age as the sport was spreading across the nation in popularity. In rural Tennessee opportunities to see professional games were limited. This drove Franklin at a young age to voraciously follow the box scores and accounts that occasionally made it into local newspapers. He supplemented this by corresponding with sporting goods suppliers in larger cities, trading small goods or services in exchange for pamphlets, scorecards, and whatever scattered bits of information they could provide about the growing baseball world.

This flood of source material soon led Franklin to begin compiling it in a more organized fashion. He started by pasting newspaper clippings and printed materials into scrapbooks divided by season. This allowed him to easily compare stats and track the evolution of teams and players from year to year. But Franklin soon sought a more durable method of preservation. In the late 1880s he had the novel idea to request original promotional cards, pamphlets, brochures and any other ephemera directly from the teams, leagues, and manufacturers. His passionate letters must have intrigued them, as shipments of materials soon arrived in Mt. Juliet courtesy of organizations like the National League, American Association, and Brown’s Tobacco Company.

Franklin carefully arranged and stored these items, with a special focus given to any trade cards, cigarette cards, or “cabinet cards” featuring individual ballplayers. These early prototypes of the baseball card became the heart of his growing collection. Numbers swelled dramatically in the 1890s as tobacco companies like Allen & Ginter and Goodwin & Company began routinely inserting illustrated baseball stars into their products. Franklin acquired examples of every issue, carefully mounting them in professionally crafted albums chronicling not just seasons but the entire careers of players whenever possible.

As baseball rose to new heights of popularity in the early twentieth century, Franklin’s now-sprawling archives became a priceless historical treasure and a fascination for locals. Word of his one-of-a-kind holdings spread beyond Mt. Juliet. Visits from sportswriters, ballplayers, and famous barnstorming stars like Smokey Joe Wood became regular occurrences in the 1910s and 1920s. Detailed records were also donated to emerging Halls of Fame. While Franklin passed away in 1947, his legacy of meticulously preserving baseball’s heritage for future generations lived on through his celebrated collection.

Today that legacy remains, as Franklin’s surviving materials are archived at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they represent perhaps the finest intact collection of pre-WWI baseball ephemera in the world. Individual cards have also been selectively loaned out over the decades for major exhibits, maintaining awareness of Franklin and Mt. Juliet’s unique place in the story of America’s pastime. Modern archivists continue conserving and cataloging remnants of this treasure, but its spirit lives on in every baseball card collector continuing the tradition of preserving memories and stats of the game. James Franklin’s passion helped legitimize what was then a very new format—the baseball card—and established Mt. Juliet’s footprint in curating the ephemeral history of America’s favorite sport.

While commercial modern cards produced since the 1880s receive more attention, few realize baseball’s documentation was pioneered in an era before standardization by dedicated early collectors like James Franklin in Mt. Juliet. His seemingly quixotic mission to chronicle players and teams through whatever materials were available deserves recognition as the genesis of today’s sprawling card culture. For nearly two centuries since, millions have followed the lead of collecting not just for value but to preserve what is arguably America’s national pastime for future generations to study, remember, and enjoy. In that tradition, the legacy of one of the first and most creative baseball card pioneers continues to shape both our understanding of history and passion for the game itself from its earliest formative years to the present day.