A Short History How Trading Cards Began
Posted on | February 9, 2010 | No Comments
To distinguish it from the ordinary playing card utilized in gambling and show business, cards connected with sports are called trading or, many times, collectible cards. Baseball cards are the most familiar, although there are also football cards, issued when the sport became very popular, and collectively sports cards, for other sports forms. Non-sports cards deal with cartoons, television, movies or comics. Logically, contemporary cards about cartoon characters are more well-liked among children than those of sports, because of the promotion of anime and comparable style cartoons.
Baseball cards were first issued publicly in its initial forms between 1902 and 1935 that, although of cardboard, were of various sizes and dimensions. It was not uniform like those at present, and usually had misprinted or erroneous contents due to production flaws. The cards were actually simply advertising gimmicks for tobacco items, chewing gum and other snacks sold during baseball games, much like the prizes in cereal boxes nowadays. Because the cards included information about the players, they later became more desirable than the products they suppported.
Since the cards could not be picked inside the packages, those who find themselves owning too many cards of one player traded them with the cards on others. Trading cards hence became the practice and the label. After 1936, the cards were manufactured in standard sizes and specifications to aid trading, and were packed and sold independently of other items. Baseball cards from then came into their own time as products, and not merely promotional pieces.
The baseball card as known today was designed in 1952 by Sy Berger, who was working for the Topps Corporation. Topps was at the time a new entrant into the baseball card field, having earlier produced cards that featured Hopalong Cassidy, a well-known Western television character played by William Boyd. Sy Berger created the card that has the name of the player, his photograph, signature, logo and team name on the front and his biography as well as some personal and game statistics at the back. The modern baseball cards still use the same general design which has become a classic.
Trading cards attained their apex in the earlier 1990s, but have gone on a long downslide ever since, along with baseball which is slowly sinking in basketball noise. From about 10,000 US stores dealing in trading cards, at present there are much less than 2,000 and growing less and less. Trading cards have gone down so much in value that many cards are priced nowadays as it did 20 years ago in adjusted prices. They have not developed into collector articles but instead cards to get rid of quickly, collecting dust rather than price in the cellars.
Many owners and hopefuls blame this unforeseen phenomenon on eBay and similar selling websites. Suddenly, reserved cards are considered rare in an area were easily and cheaply purchaseable on the Internet, so the cached ones lost value fast. Not only for baseball cards but also for all baseball or sports cards. It appears sports memorabilia is losing ground to modern pecuniary factors, and more is the pity.
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