Trading card

• 1. Introduction

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  Trading cards began not as collectibles but as cardboard stiffeners stuffed into cigarette packs. Allen and Ginter in the United States and W.D. & H.O. Wills in Britain were the first tobacco companies to print advertisements on those inserts, in 1886 and 1888 respectively. Within roughly a decade, the cards carried lithograph pictures on topics ranging from nature to war to sports. By 1900, some 300 companies had produced thousands of different tobacco card sets. Children would stand outside shops and beg cigarette buyers for the promotional inserts they didn't want. From that sidewalk hustle, an industry worth tens of billions of dollars was born. How did a piece of cardboard tucked into a cigarette pack become one of the most fiercely traded commodities in the world? And what turned a simple hobby into a market that analysts expect to reach around $100 billion by 2027?

• 2. The Cigarette Card Era

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  Trade cards, the direct ancestors of modern collectibles, were not originally meant to be kept at all. Tobacco manufacturers slipped them into paper cigarette packs to stiffen the packaging and protect the contents. The printed side served as an advertisement. But once Allen and Ginter and W.D. & H.O. Wills began adding pictures, the cards took on a life of their own. The encyclopedic range of subjects that appeared, from wildlife to military scenes to athletes, reflected what appealed to the male smokers who were the primary customers.

  World War II ended cigarette card production. Paper was scarce, and after the war the format never recovered in the same form. Collectors in Britain shifted to tea cards, while American collectors turned to bubble gum cards as the new vehicle for their hobby. The word for collecting these cards even acquired its own term: cartophily.

• 3. Baseball and the First Superstars

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  The earliest baseball cards appeared as trade cards printed by a sporting goods company in the late 1860s, roughly when baseball was becoming a professional sport. By the early 20th century, candy and tobacco companies were the main producers, and it was during this period that the most celebrated card in the hobby's history was made.

  The T206 set, distributed by the American Tobacco Company in 1909, is considered by collectors to be the most popular set of all time. At its center is the Honus Wagner card. The story passed down through the hobby is that Wagner objected to his image being placed in something children would collect, and so production of his card stopped abruptly. Fewer than 100 of his cards are believed to survive from that set. One has sold for as much as $2.8 million.

  In 1933, the Goudey Gum Company of Boston put baseball cards inside bubble gum for the first time, and printed player biographies on the backs. The 1933 Goudey set remains one of the most popular and affordable vintage sets available today. Bowman Gum of Philadelphia issued its first set in 1948, and within a few years would face its most consequential rival.

• 4. Topps and Modern Format

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  Topps Chewing Gum began inserting trading cards into bubble gum packs in 1950. Early subjects included TV and film cowboy Hopalong Cassidy and Frank Buck, whose fame rested on big game hunts in Africa. Topps produced its first baseball set in 1951, but the design resembled playing cards more than the format collectors recognize today.

  The following year, Topps owner and founder Sy Berger created the 1952 Topps Baseball set, with full playing records and statistics on each card. That set established the template that modern cards follow. Its most prized card is number 311, a Mickey Mantle card sometimes mistakenly called his rookie card. Mantle had in fact appeared in the 1951 Bowman Baseball set, but the 1952 Topps version became an icon of the hobby. On the 28th of August 2022, a copy graded SGC MT 9.5 sold for $12,600,000.

  Topps purchased Bowman Gum in 1956 and led the trading card industry for the following two and a half decades, not only in sports but in entertainment. Among its top-selling non-sports sets were Wacky Packages, first issued in 1967, Star Wars cards beginning in 1977, and Garbage Pail Kids beginning in 1985. In 1957 Topps also standardized the physical dimensions of baseball cards at 2-1/2 inches by 3-1/2 inches, setting a format that remains the basic standard for most sports cards made in the United States.

• 5. The Autograph Revolution

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  In 1990, Upper Deck changed the economics of the hobby by randomly inserting certified autographs of Reggie Jackson into boxes of baseball cards. These cards, known as Certified Autographed Inserts or CAIs, carried printed statements guaranteeing the authenticity of the signature. The card company's own reputation was tied to each one. Over time, CAIs expanded well beyond athletes to include famous actors, musicians, presidents, and even cut signatures of Albert Einstein.

  The method of obtaining autographs became a point of contention. In 2001, a company called Playoff began placing player signatures on stickers that were then affixed to cards, meaning the players never saw the finished card they were signing. Collectors opposed the practice strongly. Autographed cards also occupy an unusual space in grading: a signature can simultaneously add value by its scarcity or be treated as damage to the card's surface, depending on the grader and the market.

• 6. Grading and Value

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  Four factors determine a card's condition: centering, corners, edges, and surface. Grading companies like PSA, Beckett, and SGC assign individual grades across those four categories and combine them into a final score on a scale of 1 to 10. A card rated pristine shows no imperfections even under close inspection. A card rated poor shows heavy scuffing, severe tears, or heavy creases and no gloss at all.

  The same numerical grade carries different weight depending on when the card was made. A score of 7 can diminish the value of a card from 2018, but can substantially raise the value of a card from 1950, because older cards are far more sensitive to wear. Population also matters enormously. More than 20,000 copies of a 2018 Luka Doncic Base Prizm card have received a PSA 10 grade, and that large supply drives down what any single copy is worth.

  The global sports trading card market is currently valued at $44 billion, with projections pointing toward approximately $100 billion by 2027. Cards, however, carry no absolute monetary value. A card is worth only what a collector is willing to pay. That simple principle has driven prices from a few cents to millions of dollars, depending on the subject, the condition, and the moment.

• 7. Football, Panini, and Global Reach

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  Association football cards appeared as early as 1896, when W.D. & H.O. Wills produced a cricket series and Marcus & Company of Manchester published the first dedicated football set, called Footballers & Club Colours. Cigarette companies quickly recognized that sports cards created brand loyalty, and a succession of sets followed through the early 20th century.

  Panini formed a partnership with FIFA in 1970 and produced the first World Cup sticker album for that year's tournament. The tradition of trading duplicate World Cup stickers became, in the words of The Guardian, a playground fixture during the 1970s and 1980s. Panini assembles its World Cup squads a few months before nations officially announce them, which means surprise call-ups sometimes miss the album entirely. A notable case was 17-year-old Brazilian striker Ronaldo, called up for the 1994 FIFA World Cup squad after Panini had already finalized its selection.

  Under its Merlin brand, Topps has held the licence for Premier League sticker albums since 1994. Its Match Attax card game, launched in the 2007-08 season, became the best-selling boys' collectible in the United Kingdom, with around 1.5 million collectors, and the biggest-selling sports trading card game worldwide by sales.

• 8. Digital Cards and the Future

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  In 1995, Michael A. Pace produced what he called computer-based trading cards using CD-ROM systems and floppy discs. Five years later, Topps launched a brand called eTopps, selling sports cards exclusively online through individual initial player offerings, each available at a set price for roughly a week. Physical cards were held in a climate-controlled warehouse unless buyers requested delivery. In January 2012, Topps announced it was shutting down eTopps.

  Digital collectible card games were estimated to represent a $1.3 billion market in 2013. Tech start-ups from Spain, Ireland, Israel, and Austria entered the space in the years around that estimate. On the 1st of July 2011, Wildcat Intellectual Property Holdings filed a lawsuit against twelve defendants, including Topps, Panini, Sony, Electronic Arts, Konami, the Pokemon Company, Zynga, and Nintendo, over an alleged infringement of Wildcat's Electronic Trading Card patent.

  Topps launched its Topps Bunt phone application in 2012, allowing users to collect digital player cards, earn points, and trade with other fans. Three years later, the company ran a separate digital experiment in Europe using its Marvel Hero Attax product as an overlay to its physical card line. Meanwhile, the paper cards themselves underwent quieter changes: in 1991 Topps stopped including gum in its baseball packs after collectors complained about gum stains damaging cards, and the following year switched to cellophane wrapping to eliminate wax stains on the outer cards.