A brief history of Basketball card collecting
December 28th 2007
Fans of various sports have often found themselves collecting sports cards of their favorite players and trading them. Sports card collecting started sometime way back in the 1930’s where player cards were used to promote sales of tobacco products and later gum. However, the early player cards were those of baseball and football players. Basketball fans had to wait until much later when card manufacturers, realizing the growing popularity of the game, started making basketball player cards. Now it is a multi million dollar industry. Basketball card collecting has become a big business in the recent years.
Basketball as a game became popular 20 years ago in the 1980s, where people started actually buying player cards and discussing statistics. Basketball cards helped basketball fans to keep in touch with their favorite players. In the early days of the basketball card collecting hobby, cards were easily available at the local pharmacy, gas station, hobby store or candy store. Given its lack of popularity, there were fewer companies manufacturing cards of basketball players and hence were easily available for much cheaper than baseball cards. If you wanted the card of a particular basketball player, then all you did was ask for his card or keep buying card sets from the manufacturer, until you got your desired card. One of the leading manufacturers of basketball players cards is Topps and they have held their own ground since late 1960s. However, today it is not that simple as there are many companies in the market, that have started manufacturing and selling basketball cards. There are many choices available to the collector, in terms of manufacturer. Each card company has its own set of cards that may differ from the others. Faced with a variety of checklists and choices, it is difficult to state that your collection is complete. With auction sites coming into the picture, the entire collecting job has become very easy and convenient for collectors who can now sit at home and buy basketball cards easily with technology like the Internet which has made the whole world as one small global community.
