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Cardboard, Charisma and Cash: Collecting Baseball Cards
Article
A brief history of baseball cards, and the effect of skyrocketing demand on the "value" of modern cards.
Curator of Collections, Card Cyber Museum
Saturday, December 1, 2001
Excerpt
Baseball as a professional sport began in earnest in 1869, with the advent of the Cincinnati Red Stockings. By the mid-1880s, the names of baseball's greatest, such as Mike "King" Kelly, Cap Anson, and Buck Ewing had established strong followings. It was also at this time that the first baseball cards were issued by companies like Allen & Ginter and Lonejack Tobacco. They appeared on the back of cigarette packs largely as stylized cardboard stiffeners to reduce accidental crushing.
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Allen and Ginter's Comiskey, Goudey's Gehrig 