A Short History How Trading Cards Began
To distinguish it from the common playing card used in gaming and entertainment, cards associated with games are called trading or, many times, collectible cards. Baseball cards are the most familiar, though there are also football cards, issued when the sport became very popular, and as a group sports cards, for other sports forms. Non-sports cards deal with cartoons, television, movies or comics. Understandably, present cards about cartoon characters are more popular among kids than those of sports, because of the popularization of anime and comparable style cartoons.
Baseball cards were first introduced in its tentative forms between 1902 and 1935 that, though of cardboard, were of different sizes and specifications. It was not uniform like today, and commonly had misprinted or erroneous contents due to printing shortcomings. The cards were actually simply promotional ploys for tobacco items, chewing gum and other foodstuffs sold during baseball games, much like the tokens in cereal boxes today. Because the cards contained information regarding the players, they later became more sought after than the products they suppported.
Inasmuch as the cards cannot be picked inside the packages, those who see themselves owning too many cards of one player exchanged them with those on other players. Trading cards hence became the norm and the name. After 1936, the cards were manufactured in uniform sizes and measurements to aid trading, and were packaged and sold independently of other items. Baseball cards from then came into their own right as products, and not simply marketing items.
The baseball card as recognized today was conceptualized in 1952 by Sy Berger, who was working for the Topps Corporation. Topps was at the time a new participant into the baseball card field, having first made cards that presented Hopalong Cassidy, a well-known Western television character played by William Boyd. Sy Berger designed the card that has the name of the player, his photo, facsimile autograph, 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 identical over-all format which has become a classic.
Trading cards attained their apex in the earlier 1990s, but went on a long glide ever since, along with baseball which is slowly sinking in basketball cheers. From about 10,000 US shops dealing in trading cards, at present there are much less than 2,000 and diminishing. Trading cards have gone down so much in worth that many cards sell today as it did 20 years ago in adjusted prices. They have not become collector articles but instead cards to get rid of quickly, collecting dust rather than price in the basements.
Many collectors and hopefuls blame this unforeseen phenomenon on eBay and similar selling sites. All of a sudden, treasured cards are thought of as rare in an area were readily and inexpensively purchaseable on the Internet, so the cached ones lost value fast. Not only for baseball cards but also for all trading or sports cards. It appears sports memorabilia is losing ground to modern monetary considerations, and more is the pity.
Tags: football cards, sports cards