Baseball Memorabilia and Collectibles

The first recorded baseball game was played in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1846, between the New York Knickerbockers and the New York Baseball Club—the Knickerbockers were trounced by a score of 23 to 1. By 1857, the National Association of Base Ball Players had formed, consisting of around 16 teams. After the Civil War, the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first fully-paid professional team. Over the next hundred years, a number of leagues would emerge, including the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, which was founded in 1871 before becoming the National League in 1876. The American League was founded in 1901, and both leagues got some competition from the short-lived Federal League, whose eight teams only played from 1913 to 1915. Much of this history can be followed in vintage baseball cards, which were included in tobacco products beginning in 1887 and in packs of chewing gum beginning in 1933. The first tobacco cards were released by tobacco manufacturers Allen & Ginter and Goodwin & Company, both of which were gobbled up by American Tobacco Company in 1890. One player who appeared on cards printed by numerous tobacco brands was Cap Anson, who played first base for most of career with the Chicago White Stockings, who were renamed the Colts in 1890. Mayo Cut Plug, Yum Yum Tobacco, and Old Judge all included pictures of Cap Anson with their products. Today, the most collectible vintage tobacco cards are the T-sets, which were designated and named in 1939 by a card collector named Jefferson Burdick, whose American Card Catalog brought order to a chaotic hobby. T-sets describe tobacco cards issued in the 20th century (N-sets are for tobacco cards from the 19th century). Burdick’s five T-sets feature cards issued from 1900 to 1911. The most collected and coveted set is T206, which encompasses 525 cards issued with packs of cigarettes made by 16 different brands between 1909 and 1911. Also known as “white border” cards, the T206 set includes the famous Honus Wagner card. Wagner, it turns out, did not smoke and hated the idea of a tobacco card with his picture on it circulating among children, so he had his cards pulled. As a result, very few Wagner cards were distributed, which makes them extremely rare—in 2016, a T206 Wagner sold at auction for more than $3 million. As far as players go, two can be seen as the bookends of the first half of 20th-century baseball. The first is George Herman “Babe” Ruth, who already had his own baseball card before he broke into Major League Baseball with the Boston Red Sox at the end of the 1914 season. Earlier in that season, Ruth had been a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, so his first baseball card was printed by the "Baltimore News." Fewer than 10 copies of this card are known to exist. In Ruth’s first full season with the Red Sox, he won 18 games, still as a pitcher. That year, 1915, Ruth got his rookie card, known among collectors as the M101-5 Sporting News. In 1920, Ruth joined the New York Yankees, leaving “The Curse of the Bambino” on the hapless Sox. In his 15 seasons with the Yankees, Ruth would lead the American League in home runs 10 times (he accomplished that feat a total of 12 times, including his two home-run crowns with the Red Sox) and win four World Series. A U.S. Caramel card from 1932 celebrated the Babe in full color, and in 1933, Goudey printed four Babe Ruth cards (Goudy #s 53, 144, 149, and 181), three of which used variations of the slugger in the same swinging pose (the yellow-background #53 is considered the rarest). After he retired from the Red Sox at the end of the 1935 season, Ruth memorabilia continued to be produced, as in a Milton Bradley board game from 1936 and a Babe Ruth baseball card in the 1948-49 Leaf set. Thumbing the baseball cards in that 1948-49 Leaf set (although due to their scarcity, you would not actually thumb them) is like taking a trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Along with the Babe, the set contains the last major card for Joe DiMaggio, some of the best Ted Williams and Bob Feller cards ever printed, and rookie cards for Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Leroy “Satchel” Paige, and Jackie Robinson, the mid-century baseball bookend to Ruth. As the first African American player to break baseball’s white-only color barrier, Robinson holds a special place in baseball history, which is why every player in Major League Baseball wears Robinson’s #42 on April 15, the day Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Of course, baseball fans have more than just vintage cards to collect. Some go for promotional items such as baseball programs, which go back to the 1890s and were published for everything from mid-week day games to World Series. Other collectibles include game-used items, from vintage bats and balls to scuffed-up gloves and torn uniforms. In recent years, bobbleheads and enameled pins have become popular with collectors, as have anything that’s been signed by baseball greats such as Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Carl Yastrzemski, Yogi Berra, and Willie Mays. But autograph hounds need to be careful—fake sports memorabilia is a lucrative business.