Trading card

A trading card is a small card which usually contains an image of a person, place or thing along with a short description and other text. They can be collected as a hobby, and some are used to play games. Trading cards are or were often included with certain retail products.
Multiple different cards within the same category are typically issued, which can be collected and traded to create complete sets. When distributed individually they are known as singles.
Trading cards are particularly associated with sports, but can cover numerous other topics such as cartoons, comic book characters, television series and film stills.
In the 1990s, cards designed specifically for playing games became popular enough to develop into a distinct category, collectible card games. These games are mostly fantasy-based gameplay. Fantasy art cards are a subgenre of trading cards that focus on the artwork.

History

Origins

s are the ancestors of cigarette and food cards. Some of the earliest prizes found in retail products were cigarette cards; trade cards were designed to advertise products that were inserted into paper packs of cigarettes as stiffeners to protect the contents. Allen and Ginter in the U.S. in 1886, and British company W.D. & H.O. Wills in 1888, were the first tobacco companies to print advertisements. A couple of years later, lithograph pictures on the cards with an encyclopedic variety of topics from nature to war to sports—subjects that appealed to men who smoked—began to surface as well. By 1900, there were thousands of tobacco card sets manufactured by 300 different companies. Children would stand outside of stores to ask customers who bought cigarettes for the promotional cards. Following the success of cigarette cards, trade cards were produced by manufacturers of other products and included in the product or handed to the customer by the store clerk at the time of purchase. World War II put an end to cigarette card production due to limited paper resources, and after the war cigarette cards never really made a comeback. After that collectors of prizes from retail products took to collecting tea cards in the UK and bubble gum cards in the US.

Early baseball cards

The first baseball cards were trade cards printed in the late 1860s by a sporting goods company, around the time baseball became a professional sport. Most of the baseball cards around the beginning of the 20th century came in candy and tobacco products. It was during this era that the most valuable baseball card ever printed, the T206 tobacco card featuring Honus Wagner, was produced. The T206 set, distributed by the American Tobacco Company in 1909, is considered by collectors to be the most popular set of all time. In 1933, the Goudey Gum Company of Boston issued baseball cards with players biographies on the backs and was the first to put baseball cards in bubble gum. The 1933 Goudey set remains one of the most popular and affordable vintage sets to this day. Bowman Gum of Philadelphia issued its first baseball cards in 1948.

Modern trading cards

, now known as "The Topps Company, Inc.", started inserting trading cards into bubble gum packs in 1950 with such topics as TV and film cowboy Hopalong Cassidy, Frank Buck from "Bring 'Em Back Alive" on big game hunts in Africa, and All-American Football Cards. Topps produced its first baseball trading card set in 1951, with the resulting design resembling that of playing cards. Topps owner and founder Sy Berger created the first true modern baseball card set, complete with playing record and statistics, the following year in the form of 1952 Topps Baseball. This is one of the most popular sets of all time; its most valued piece was 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311, which is sometimes erroneously referred to as Mantle's rookie card, though he had in fact appeared in the 1951 Bowman Baseball set. On August 28, 2022, a Mickey Mantle baseball card was sold for $12,600,000.
Topps purchased their chief competitor, Bowman Gum, in 1956. Topps was the leader in the trading card industry from 1956 to 1980, not only in sports cards but in entertainment cards as well. Many of the top selling non-sports cards were produced by Topps, including Wacky Packages, Star Wars and Garbage Pail Kids. In 1991, Topps ceased packaging gum with their baseball cards, which many collectors preferred because their cards could no longer be damaged by gum stains. The following year, in 1992, Topps ceased using heavily waxed paper to wrap their packs of cards and began using cellophane plastic exclusively, thus eliminating the possibility of wax stains on the top and bottom cards in the packs.

Digital trading cards

In an attempt to stay current with technology and digital trends, existing and new trading card companies started to create digital trading cards that lived exclusively online or as a digital counterpart of a physical card.
In 1995 Michael A. Pace produced "computer based" trading cards, utilizing a CD ROM computer system and floppy discs.
In 2000, Topps launched a brand of sports cards, called etopps. These cards were sold exclusively online through individual IPO's in which the card is offered for usually a week at the IPO price. That same year, Tokenzone launched a digital collectibles platform that was used by media companies to distribute content in the form of digital trading cards. The quantity sold depended on how many people offered to buy but was limited to a certain maximum. After a sale, the cards were held in a climate-controlled warehouse unless the buyer requests delivery, and the cards could be traded online without changing hands except in the virtual sense. In January 2012, Topps announced that they would be discontinuing their eTopps product line.
Digital collectible card games were estimated to be a $1.3B market in 2013. A number of tech start-ups have attempted to establish themselves in this space, notably Stampii, Fantom, Deckdaq, and 2Stic.
Panini launched their Adrenalyn XL platform with an NBA and NFL trading card collection. Connect2Media together with Winning Moves, created an iPhone Application to host a series of trading card collections, including Dinosaurs, James Bond - 007, Celebs, Gum Ball 3000, European Football Stars and NBA. In 2011, mytcg Technologies launched a platform for hosting digital trading card content.
On July 1, 2011, Wildcat Intellectual Property Holdings filed a lawsuit against 12 defendants, including Topps, Panini, Sony, Electronic Arts, Konami, Pokémon, Zynga and Nintendo, for allegedly infringing Wildcat's "Electronic Trading Card" patent.
In 2012, Topps also launched their first phone application: Topps Bunt was an app that allowed users to connect with other fans in a fantasy league type game environment wherein they could collect players, earn points from playing, and trade and compete with other fans. Three years later, the same company launched a digital experiment in Europe with its Marvel Hero Attax, using digital as an overlay to its physical product.

Value

Today, the development of the Internet has given rise to various online communities, through which members can trade collectible cards with each other. Cards are often bought and sold via eBay and other online retail sources. Many websites solicit their own "sell to us" page in hopes to draw in more purchase opportunities.
Singles are usually of higher value than contemporary cards which are often sold as "bulk" or as a personal collection. Ordinary collectible cards serve little function beyond memorabilia, but cards from collectible card games are also used in game tournaments. Generally, CCGs fetch higher initial prices than trading cards because of the dual nature of being both a game piece and a collectible. Prices will fluctuate for CCGs as cards become legal or illegal to play in certain game formats.
The value of a trading card depends on a combination of the card's condition, the subject's popularity, and the scarcity of the card. In some cases, especially with older cards that preceded the advent of card collecting as a widespread hobby, they have become collector's items of considerable value. In recent years, many sports cards have not necessarily appreciated as much in value due to overproduction, although some manufacturers have used limited editions and smaller print runs to boost value. Trading cards, however, do not have an absolute monetary value. Cards are only worth as much as a collector is willing to pay.
Valued at $44 billion today, the global sports trading card market is expected to surge to approximately $100 billion by 2027.

Condition

Card condition is one aspect of trading cards that determine the value of a card. There are four areas of interest in determining a card's condition. Centering, corners, edges and surface are taken into consideration for imperfections, such as color spots and blurred images, and wear, such as creases, scratches, and tears, when determining a trading card's value. Cards are considered poor to pristine based on their condition, or in some cases rated 1 through 10. A card in pristine condition, for example, will generally be valued higher than a card in poor condition. Major card grading companies which provide these ratings on a scale of 1-10 include PSA, Beckett, and SGC. They provide individual grades for the centering, corners, edges, and surface of the card to eventually combine for one final grade. Older cards are generally more sensitive to wear and tear, meaning a '7' might lessen the value of a card printed in 2018, but could significantly increase the value of a card from 1950. While the grade has a major impact on the card's value, the population does as well. For example, there are over 20,000 Luka Doncic 2018 Base Prizm Cards graded a PSA 10, meaning this large population drives down the value of each card.

Condition	Description
Pristine	Perfect card. No imperfections or damage to the naked eye and upon close inspection.
Mint condition	No printing imperfections or damage to the naked eye. Very minor printing imperfections or damage upon close inspection. Clean gloss with one or two scratches.
Near Mint/Mint	No printing imperfections or damage to the naked eye, but slight printing imperfections or damage upon close inspection. Solid gloss with very minor scratches.
Near Mint	Noticeable, but minor, imperfections or wear on the card. Solid gloss with very minor scratches.
Excellent/Near Mint	Noticeable, but minor, imperfections or wear on the card. Mostly solid gloss with minor scratches.
Excellent	Noticeable imperfections or moderate wear on the card. Some gloss lost with minor scratches.
Very Good/Excellent	Noticeable imperfections or moderate wear on the card. Heavy gloss lost with very minor scuffing, and an extremely subtle tear.
Very Good	Heavy imperfections or heavy wear on the card. Almost no gloss. Minor scuffing or very minor tear.
Good	Severe imperfections or wear on the card. No gloss. Noticeable scuffing or tear.
Poor	Destructive imperfections or wear on the card. No gloss. Heavy scuffing, severe tear or heavy creases.