Starting a Baseball Card Collection

baseballcardsThere are more collectors of baseball cards than there are of any other type of sports card. It makes sense, when you think about the fact that baseball cards have been in production far longer than any other form of sports card. Baseball card collecting is a pastime rich with tradition and history. Quite a good few baseball card collectors also collect other sports cards and memorabilia, and tend to be quite avid among the various types of collectors. Some enjoy the thrills of opening a fresh box of cards. Others find their thrill in hunting down specific cards, like special inserts or rookie cards.

There are a plethora of means and ways to collect baseball cards, there is no right or wrong way to do it. Many collectors will collect cards that are of their favorite team, and they do it by either collecting team sets, or by collecting single cards.

The History of Collecting Baseball Cards

Nobody is completely, 100 percent sure which baseball card was the very first one to be produced. Even still, the hobby relating to baseball card collecting dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century, which is well over a hundred years ago. The first company that is believed to have produced baseball cards and cards for other sports is a company known as Goodwin & Co., which was the manufacturing company for Old Judge cigarettes and Gypsy Queen cigarettes. The first baseball cards were actually pretty small in comparison to modern day baseball cards, as they were only between an inch and a half and two and a half inches, and they were printed on really thick cardboard. Old Judge picture baseball cards were issued between 1886 and 1890, and there were more than 2000 different cards from this set alone that have since been found and cataloged.

Goodwin & Co managed to have success in marketing their baseball cards and numerous other sports and picture cards along with their cigarettes, and this led other tobacco manufacturing companies to issue their own unique sets of cards. Between 1909 and 1911, the American Tobacco Company had a T-206 set that had a famous Honus Wagner baseball card. Companies in numerous other industries also began to use baseball cards, which they offered as a premium to sell products, including caramel companies, candy companies and gum manufacturing companies.

The Topps Company was able to dominate the market for chewing gum and baseball cards for many years until it lost in an anti-monopoly market in the year 1980, and then in the year 1981 Fleer and Donruss began to make major baseball card sets. Not long after this point, baseball cards became even more important than the products that they were packaged with, and they began to be packaged all on their own, creating a completely new industry. Now there are a myriad of companies that are manufacturing baseball cards including Upper Deck, Score and Pacific.

Photo Credits: tonystl

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World Series

Sports Memorabilia -> Fan Apparel & Souvenirs -> World Series

Even someone who knows very little about sports most likely knows what the World Series is all about, because it’s heavily advertised and almost impossible to avoid during the fall. The World Series is Major League Baseball’s championship series, played every autumn to determine the winning team, considered the champion of the entire baseball season. Years ago, this championship was often called the Fall Classic, the October Classic, or The Series.

Major League Baseball is made up of 29 clubs, split between the American League and the National League, which includes a Canadian team. Each League has its own championship series preceding the World Series to determine which team is their League champ and will go on to play against the other League’s winner in the World Series.

The World Series has been an annual event since 1903, though baseball has included some sort of championship playoff or formula since about 1860. The ‘World Series’ only refers to those championships played since 1903, however, which are known as the modern playoffs. The series is played in 7 games, with one team winning the best of 7 and taking the championship. This has been the standard formula, except in 1903, 1919, 1920 and 1921 when the series was actually played according to the best of 9 games. Winners get the famous World Series Trophy and each player on the team gets a World Series ring. The winning team also gets a larger percentage of ticket profits than the losing team.

For World Series memorabilia collectors, there’s no shortage of items in collector sporting goods stores and online auctions like eBay. Some collector favorites include New York Yankees memorabilia. The Yankees, an American League team, have the distinction of having won more World Series championships than any other team. They’ve played in 39 of the 104 series, and won 26 of them. The Dodgers of the National League rank 2nd in total World Series, with 18 appearances, though they’ve only won 6 of those times. And the St. Louis Cardinals, a National League club, have appeared in the series 17 times and won 10 of those, the most wins of any National League team.

Another Major League Baseball team holds another sort of World Series record, but this time for having the longest World Series losing streak. The Chicago Cubs haven’t won a world series since 1908, making them unpopular with many fans, and giving them underdog status which makes them even more popular with others.

World Series memorabilia is a popular item on eBay. The items differ by the year of the series, with the teams meeting in the final seven games being depicted on T-shirts, programs, hats, sports equipment and other items, with the ultimate winner being commemorated on those items and many more. Ask the sellers if the items are official releases of Major League Baseball, and check tags for that mark once you receive them. Signed items should be carefully examined, with the signatures compared to known signatures of the player.

Originally posted 2008-11-01 14:00:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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