Some consider the very first baseball cards to be lithographed cards from the late 1860s featuring individual baseball players. The 1868 and 1869 baseball cards are extremely rare, with only a handful known to still exist today. The first baseball cards that are universally acknowledged as the true beginning of the baseball card collecting craze were produced in the 1870s by tobacco manufacturers.
In 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, considered by many to be the first all-professional baseball team, popularized baseball across the nation. This helped fuel growing interest in the sport during the late 1860s and 1870s. During this time, multiple tobacco companies began experimenting with printing baseball card lithographs and inserting them into cigarette and chewing tobacco packs to help promote their brands.
In 1871, the tobacco firm Goodwin & Co. is believed to have been the first to mass-produce and insert baseball cards into tobacco products as a successful marketing tactic. This laid the foundation for what would become an over century-long tradition of tobacco companies and baseball joining forces. The early Goodwin & Co. cards featured individual images of star players with minimal text. This helped spread awareness and interest in baseball superstars across the country, at a time when the sport was still in its infancy.
Other pioneering tobacco companies that issued some of the earliest known baseball cards included Allen & Ginter in 1886 and 1888. What makes these cards especially significant is that they marked a shift towards including more detailed player statistics and stats on the back of the cards, setting the blueprint for modern baseball cards. Allen & Ginter’s brand of cigarette was launched with an innovative marketing campaign involving the mass-production of picture cards. The cards depicted famous personalities from all walks of life at the time, with baseball players mingled among statesmen, authors, and celebrities.
In 1890, one of the most renowned early issuers of baseball cards emerged – Old Judge cigarette brand. Their early baseball cards featured vibrant color illustrations of players and included player positions, stats, and biographies on the back. Many regard the Old Judge issues as the first baseball cards that are immediately recognizable as precursors to the modern baseball card in terms of design sense and focus on player stats.
The popularity of tobacco companies inserting baseball cards into their products exploded over the next few decades, as the sport rapidly grew into America’s pastime. Major tobacco brands that issued iconic early 20th century sets included T205 White Border produced between 1909-1911 by the American Tobacco Company, and T206 produced between 1909-1911. These have become extremely valuable to collectors due to their rarity, condition, and importance in baseball card history.
During the 1920s and 1930s, many regional tobacco firms also got into the card-making business, leading to hundreds of local sets featuring small and independent leagues. The 1930s saw a boom in production of cards insert into Cracker Jack popcorn. Topps Chewing Gum emerged as a dominant company in the post-WWII era, and produced some of the most iconic sets in the 1950s like the famous 1952 Topps and iconic black and white designs of the late 1950s.
While tobacco advertising restrictions passed in the 1970s pulled trading cards out of cigarette packages, the baseball card craze ushered in by over a century of tobacco promotion had firmly cemented collecting as a treasured American tradition, especially for baby boomers coming of age. Companies like Topps and Fleer would ensure cards remained popular hobby staples through innovations like color photos, rookie cards of future legends, and oddball parallel issues through the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond.
This long history demonstrates how embedded in American life and our national pastime baseball cards have become, starting from simple marketing premiums in the late 1800s to a cornerstone of both the sport and collecting communities. Their vibrant visuals helped spread the reach of baseball heroes across regions at a time when transportation limitations made following individual players more challenging. In the process, tobacco companies introduced generations to their first sports stars, inadvertently helping to fuel card collecting as both a nostalgic fandom and lifelong passion.
