Once upon a time, there was only a handful of baseball card collectors. In the 1800s and early 1900s, most cards were issued as premium items or promotional advertising to entice consumers to buy tobacco products. During that period, baseball was considered a "gentlemen's game" which was played by men in a social setting. "Base Ball Clubs" were formed, and clubs from different cities would play one another for fun and profit. By the 1870s, some of the teams from the largest cities formed leagues, and the players started becoming professionals who played for a salary rather than a cut of the admission receipts and winning bets. The National League tried to cater to the upper class by prohibiting Sunday games (back then, most middle and lower class workers had a six-day work week) and charged a high ticket price of fifty cents. Many spectators of ball games were men who watched in suits and smoked cigars. It seemed natural at the time to include pictures of ball players in cigarette packs.
Somewhere along the way, the kids took over. As the nation continued shifting from a rural society to a more urban one, it became more common to see kids playing baseball or stickball in the streets. While more students were staying in high schools instead of leaving school to help work the family farm, high school baseball teams began competing. Major league baseball evolved from its early status as a social function and became more of a business: gambling was frowned upon, and the clubs began sending scouts to minor league and semipro teams in search of fresh talent. It became more common to see kids coming to the ballpark (or watching through holes in the outfield fences).
By 1912, the sun was beginning to set on the second era of tobacco cards. As tobacco companies ceased using baseball cards to sell their products, candy companies began to use them. The reason was simple: as more kids were becoming interested in baseball, candy companies were using famous baseball players to encourage those kids to buy their candy. In 1914 and 1915, cards were found in boxes of Cracker Jack. During the 1920s, cards would be found in American Caramel Company products as well as with ice cream. Also common during the era were strip cards and Exhibit cards, which were usually dispensed from penny machines found in stores and at fairs. In 1933, "bubblegum cards" were born when several gum companies began selling cards along with their gum.
1968 Topps Wax Pack
During this period and into the 1960s, most collectors of cards were kids. These kids would trade their extras with other kids to get cards they didn't have. They also flipped with other kids to win cards, or placed the cards in bicycle spokes (and the bigger the star, the louder they were supposed to sound). After the World Series, most would put their cards away and forget about them. Many of the shoeboxes placed in the closet would not survive Mom's spring cleaning. Then the cycle would begin anew: baseball season began again, shops would start selling the cards and kids would blow their allowance on them. As the kids grew older and began to give up the things of their youth, many threw out their cards, gave them to other kids or packed them away. Very few collectors took their hobby with them into adulthood. That would soon change.
As with stamps, coins and other types of collectibles, baseball cards began to be collected by a small number of serious collectors. By the 1930s, some of these collectors were corresponding by mail and trying to fill the missing cards from their sets. Some collectors would find sellers in newspaper classified ads, and others would buy from auctions. Many had cabinets like the card catalog files found in libraries where they would store and organize their cards.
The most notable of these early collectors was Jefferson Burdick of Syracuse, New York. Burdick worked at an electronic parts factory until severe arthritis forced him to spend more time at home. Burdick then began contacting other collectors and built a sizeable collection of cards from the 1880s to the 1950s. During the 1930s, he contributed some articles to a national hobby magazine, which caused several collectors to write in and ask about cards that they had been keeping. Seeing a need for some type of reference that could aid card collectors, he used his collection as a basis for a major checklist. That checklist, The American Card Catalog, was first published in 1937. It was updated several times through 1960 and is the basis for the baseball card catalogs still in use today.
While Burdick has been referred to as the "father of baseball card collecting," it should be noted that he was not a fan of baseball, nor do any accounts show that he ever followed the sport. His hobby was collecting paper items, such as postcards, stereoscopic pictures, greeting cards, and valentines. As fate would have it, baseball cards were part of what he collected; while the ACC set the standard for today's card catalogs, it contained a great deal more than just baseball cards. Thanks to the diligence of Jefferson Burdick and his dedication to his collection, he formed the basis for the hobby as we know it today.
It was Burdick who began many of the designations that are commonly used today: "N" for nineteenth-century tobacco, "T" for twentieth-century tobacco, "E" for early candy cards, "R" for gum cards, and so on. T206, now the universal name for the 523-card white-bordered set issued by the numerous subsidiaries of the American Tobacco Company from 1909 through 1911, was simply the catalog number Burdick placed on that set. Burdick mounted his entire collection and in 1947 donated it to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. He devoted the rest of his life to mounting his collection in hundreds of scrapbooks for display, completing his work three months before his death.
Baseball had a "Golden Age" after the second World War. Much of this has been attributed to the fact that television sets were beginning to bring the game out of the ballparks and into the living rooms of America. Not coincidentally, the kids who sat home and watched these games became fans of the sport. As baseball card sets began to be issued again in the late 1940s, a new generation of collectors emerged. Many of the day's stars -- Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Sandy Koufax -- are still icons of the sport.
As with many other aspects of American life, as the "Baby Boom" generation grew up, they chose to keep their childhood alive after adolescence had ended. By the 1960s, many collectors kept their hobby, but often kept that fact to themselves. Since card collecting was viewed as "kids' stuff", some long-time collectors recall the weird looks they were given when they walked into a store to buy new cards. Some have stories of telling candy store owners that they were buying the packs for a kid brother. A market was beginning to develop, but the marketplace was taking more time.
By the early 1970s, a few card dealers began to set up shop. Many operated through mail-order only, and most did it as a supplemental income to their "day job." Some dealers were collectors who sold their own extra cards and used the profits to buy more cards for their own collection; other dealers were businessmen who saw that there was a great deal of money to make. There were very few stores open for business, and many dealers worked out of their own homes (some by appointment only). Once the dealers began to get business and a marketplace was beginning to emerge, some dealers started working together to build the hobby.
The first card shows (called "sports card conventions" at the time) were held in larger cities at first. Usually held once or twice a year, the conventions allowed dealers to rent a table and sell cards to collectors. The conventions were good for dealers and collectors alike: the dealers gained more business, and collectors were able to see the merchandise before they bought it. Additionally, dealers were able to distribute business cards and reach more regular customers.
Another noteworthy event of this era occurred in 1974. Topps, which for all intents and purposes, was the baseball card maker, began to issue its sets at one time, instead of in several series as they had been doing since 1952. Dealers could then order complete sets early in the year and have them available for the collectors who were not likely to go through the trouble of opening scores of packs.
As the hobby grew during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and more former collectors pulled out their old shoeboxes stored away in years past, card values began to make a dramatic rise. When Fleer and Donruss issued their first sets in 1981, the competition was good for the industry. In fact, in their haste to get those first sets out that year, both Fleer and Donruss had to go back to the presses and correct errors found on their cards. That, in turn, caused some collectors to focus on collecting error and variation cards. Rookie cards, which had never caused much excitement with collectors in years past, were looked at with more scrutiny now that three companies were issuing sets and became the object of speculation by some collectors, who bought them in bulk, hoping the values would rise and rake in a tidy profit.
For the first time, cards became a commodity; some collectors would buy and sell them as if they were stocks and bonds. Often, they could be found in bulk lots of the same card. A card that rose a nickel in value could mean that a lot of 100 could be sold for five dollars more. At the same time, the cards of many superstar players (like Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams) and became so highly sought after that many were priced out of the range of many collectors. The laws of supply and demand, which had always applied to what collectors would be willing to pay for cards, became more important as the market grew and many collectors realized that the supply of older sets wasn't growing (Some unsavory dealers circumvented this problem; this was when counterfeit cards really began appearing on the market).
By 1982, the U.S. economy went into a short slump. Some collectors, who were nervous about rising values in the face of an uncertain economic future, decided to hold off on many big-ticket purchases, and the baseball card market began to collapse. At the same time, some collectors realized that the 1982 sets were being overproduced (the result of the larger marketplace increasing supply to satisfy an expected rise in demand), with the 1982 Fleer and Donruss sets exhibiting less quality than that found in the 1982 Topps set. This trend continued in 1983, but in 1984 Donruss and Fleer began to turn the corner. That year (and in the next two), Donruss and Fleer each had a legitimate claim that its set was superior to the Topps issue. At the same time, they limited production and distribution and created a perceived scarcity of sets. At the same time, Topps continued its overproduction but did nothing to improve the quality of its cards.
By 1985-86, the economic slump was over, and the market began to grow again. Magazines began appearing monthly: Dr. James Beckett's monthly price guide and Krause Publications' Baseball Cards magazine both had appeared by this time and, along with Sports Collectors' Digest (which first went to press in 1974) chronicled the new surge in collector interest. A strong rookie class in 1986 helped the market considerably; Donruss and Fleer were helped most, because Topps did not include most of that year's rookies until its Traded set. From that point until 1989, the "Big Three" increased production and could be found everywhere. As a result, most cards printed from 1986-1988 can be found today for about the same price as they were then. It was not until 1989 and the emergence of a new competitor that the next stage in the evolution of the hobby would develop.
When Upper Deck issued its first set in 1989, their first promotional material pointed out their high quality: full-color pictures (front and back), glossy cards, five colors of ink, and a counterfeit-resistant hologram. They also explained that there would be a limited production -- only three out of every five collectors would be able to get a set. Finally, the higher quality and limited production would come at a higher price; for the first time, collectors had to pay a dollar or more for a current pack of baseball cards. Despite the fact that these items were contrary to the conventional wisdom of baseball card makers, collectors responded in a positive manner. In the next few years, the other "established" card manufacturers were improving the quality of their sets in order to remain competitive in a more crowded marketplace.
For better or worse, the baseball card hobby was changed forever during the 1990s. Baseball card sets would become "base sets" and "parallel sets" with the introduction of chase cards. Professional grading services would ensure that the investors would still feel at home in the hobby. Cards with pieces of memorabilia (bats, jerseys, ballpark seats, etc.) began to appear. Card manufacturers began to ship different types of card packs to retail outlets than those sent to hobby shops. Autographed cards and redemption cards began to appear in packs. The emergence of the internet gave rise to many web-based auction sites (like eBay), making another convenient outlet for collectors to buy cards. Finally, sets began to be issued in series again after nearly 20 years.
Somewhere along the line, the kids, who had been the backbone of the hobby for nearly a century, no longer appeared to be collecting the cards as often as in the past. Some collectors began getting frustrated with the large amount of new material and the increased price of the new cards; many simply stopped collecting new cards altogether and concentrated on building older sets. Younger collectors, who did not have the disposable income to justify blowing up to ten dollars for a pack of eight cards, often chose to stay away. As the new card packs began to tout their chase cards, inserts and memorabilia cards, buying cards began to take the feel of a lottery: you paid five dollars for a pack, and the six cards inside might have a valuable autograph or piece of game-used memorabilia on it, that could immediately be sold for twenty dollars (while the other cards inside were often discarded). Thus, card collecting became less of a hobby and more of an investment.
The cycle was complete: in a century, the hobby of collecting baseball cards had gone from an adult-oriented diversion to an institution among kids, and then back to a hobby more often followed by adults.
* as written by Chris Stufflestreet
A Somewhat thorough history of baseball cards
