Origins of Baseball Cards

Professional baseball was created at the end of the 1860's and along with it came the first baseball cards.

In the late 1860's, sporting goods company, Peck & Snyder created the first baseball card. It was a picture of the Cincinnati Red Stockings glued to a card. These cards were used to advertise the team. 

 

Cigarette companies such as Allen & Ginter and Goodwin & Co. would put baseball cards in packs of cigarettes as an advertisement technique. It worked very well for the companies, and promoted smoking to many Americans, including a lot of children, causing controversy over whether or not kids should be buying cigarettes. 

 

In the 1880's cigarette companies started making sets of cards, where one card would come in each pack. This would entice people to buy more pack of cigarettes to complete the set. 

 

By the late 1880's baseball cards had become more popular and with that came improvements to the card industry. The biggest one of those improvements was Goodwin and Co. releasing by far the biggest set of the time. The set included over 2300 cards and portrayed over 500 players from 40 major and minor league ball clubs. The cards were not mass printed either, rather they were high quality photographs pasted onto heavy stock cardboard.

These first 20 or so years of the baseball card industry were crucial to creating the foundation of what baseball cards are today.