What can you tell me about non-sports cards?

[polakoff]

Hi all,

I’m really strictly a baseball-only guy but I understand the market, big names, key cards and sets, etc. for all sports. But I have a huge blind spot about non-sport cards. Like the other sports, I have no intention on ever buying, selling, or collecting these, but I do have an interest in having a working understanding of it. I was kind of looking for a primer on this subject but had difficulty locating one that answered some of the questions I have.

The types of things I’m hoping to learn are things like:

Is there a history of non-sport cards that diverges in some way from sports cards? (My basic understanding is they both went from tobacco to gum to modern day, but not sure that’s accurate)

What are the most desirable vintage and modern sets?

Are some franchises or subjects more popular than others? Which and why?

Are there rough equivalents (in how they’re viewed, not necessarily in price) to baseball cards like T206 Wagner (holy grail), 52 Mantle (golden age storied card), 89 Griffey (common but iconic and popular), 11 Trout (ultra modern and expensive)?

What cards have increased in value lately and what pushed that increase?

Are there blue chip subjects the way Mantle, Clemente, Ruth, Trout, etc. are? As in, subjects that are seen as worthwhile investments at any point in the market?

Anything else someone who just wants to understand the market and not invest should know?

Thank you!

[brianp-beme]

Personally I can tell you squat about non-sports cards, but you might also try asking the same thing on the Net54 sister site Non-Sports Card forum, whose ad is at top right of this page. Here is a link as well:

https://forum.vintagenonsports.com/

Brian

[swarmee]

Yes, they started as cigarette pack stiffeners and moved into caramel and candy before bubble gum. Then got big on their own.
Some of the biggest rarities were intentional short prints like The Strong Man (Schutter Johnson I want to be a... series), American Caramel Presidents William McKinley, and Western Series Cowboy Outfit. Basically, these cards were required to complete the set in order to redeem for a pair of roller skates or a pound of chocolate or some other prize.

1938 Horrors of War, 1952 Look-N-See, 1962 Mars Attacks, 1985 Garbage Pail Kids are consistently collected.

The ~1880 Marquis de Lorne card is rare and valuable and was thought to be the first ever tobacco card.

Famous actors, presidents, space heroes, etc have a following.

[riggs336]

And, after you get to the site referenced above, click on "Gallery" and spend a few hours exploring the beauty and diversity of non-sports cards

[samosa4u]

1940 Gum Inc. Superman and 1959 Fleer Three Stooges are very popular as well.

[riggs336]

As well as R73 Indian Gum and R89, R90 Mickey Mouse.

[rhettyeakley]

I collect a ton of non-sports cards. Non-sports tobacco cards predate Sports by several years. It was thought the Marquis of Lorne card was the 1st Tobacco card set but the past few years we have discovered that the likely 1st set was the N342 Between The Acts series that began roughly 1877-1878 by the Thomas Hall Tobacco Co. they continued to make cards of actresses/actors from that time period all the way into the 1890’s.

That same outfit produced the first set of sports Tobacco cards as well around 1881. It is a set of 12 cards featuring “pedestrians” (long distance runners of sorts) and “oarsmen”. I have nearly the whole set of those cards if you wanted to see some.

Baseball cards began several years later in and around 1886 with the Old Judge series (N167)

[skelly423]

It really depends on your personal tastes, but there are some great sets. Personally, I'm a huge fan (and collector) of the 1933 Sea Raiders set. Made by World Wide Gum (same people who made the 1933 Goudey set). Visually more impressive than any baseball set I've ever owned.

[buymycards]

There are hundreds of non-sports sets, with some of the most beautiful and interesting cards that exist. Just like with baseball, several sets have some real rarities, along with short printed high number cards, printing errors, etc. It would take hours and hours to answer all of the questions that you asked.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

We hold 2 dedicated Non-Sports auctions a year and you can browse all of our past results which are starting to make for decent reference material. We've sold cards from 1880's to today.

[rhettyeakley]

Is there a history of non-sport cards that diverges in some way from sports cards? (My basic understanding is they both went from tobacco to gum to modern day, but not sure that’s accurate)

Basically they followed the same pattern with the Non-Sports card dominating the 19th Century market for the most part, sports cards were not as popular in their day as the Actress/Pinup subjects into the early 20th Century (this changed with the frenzy around T206 cards in 1909) which saw a new generation of Tobacco cards and Candy cards at that time that shifted to Caramel cards in the 1920's into the Gum era from the 1930's on to modern cards today.

What are the most desirable vintage and modern sets?

For vintage--1930-40's Gum cards are the most colorful and probably the most highly collected followed closely by the N-cards (19th Century Tobacco) with T-cards being right behind (T-cards are great buys at current levels as you can often find singles for $1-3 each)

Are some franchises or subjects more popular than others? Which and why?

For 19th Century cards the non-actress series are always more popular, with cards depicting male subjects also tend to sell for more and are more highly collected in general, same goes for T-cards. For Gum cards the more popular the subject matter the more highly collected--Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Dick Tracy are going to sell for more than a set of Flags

Are there rough equivalents (in how they’re viewed, not necessarily in price) to baseball cards like T206 Wagner (holy grail), 52 Mantle (golden age storied card), 89 Griffey (common but iconic and popular), 11 Trout (ultra modern and expensive)?

Yes, there are some legendary rarities like the aforementioned N519 Marquis of Lorne, R114 US Caramel William McKinley, Strongman card from R72 Schutter-Johnson "I'm Gonna Be..." and the R172 Wild West Outfit card. For "modern-vintage" (1950-60's) graded Mars Attacks (especially the Checklist) are VERY popular, For even more modern cards there are huge markets for 1st Series Garbage Pail Kids, early Pokemon and Magic The Gathering cards

What cards have increased in value lately and what pushed that increase?

more modern Pokemon cards are incredibly popular right now, but most vintage cards are gaining in value and popularity as a lot of sports card collectors have begun to shift to the non-sports arena. In the T-card era for example instead of buying a single T206 HOFer in low/mid grade you can potentially purchase an entire set of 50 cards from 1910 depicting Native Americans (T73) or Cowboys (T53) which is therapeutic for the "set collector" types that can't afford to collect sets of T-card era cards.

Are there blue chip subjects the way Mantle, Clemente, Ruth, Trout, etc. are? As in, subjects that are seen as worthwhile investments at any point in the market?

As mentioned above the more popular subject matter are the ones that have the highest following... Comic Book Characters, Disney, War, Western, Mars Attacks, Historical People, etc will always be most popular

[NonSportDaniel]

Best thread ever

[Exhibitman]

Good for music fans too:

[Peter_Spaeth]

Don't overlook the infinite number of foreign issues.

[Peter_Spaeth]

...

[Exhibitman]

The main cast of Casablanca in postcards:



just missing Sidney Greenstreet

Some funny stuff too:

[nat]

"and Magic The Gathering cards"

I quit playing Magic in 1996, and I openly weep over what my cards would be worth today. (Of course I sold them in 1996 for a tiny fraction of their current value.) Below, a small group of commons that must have escaped my notice when liquidating my collection. Figures that it'd be the grizzly bears I've still got, and not the moxes.

[swarmee]

Personally, I consider Magic, Yugioh, and Pokemon to be a different category of cards, the Collectible Card Games (CCGs) or as PSA calls them, Trading Card Games (TCGs).
So while they can carry a large value themselves, I don't lump them under the category of "non-sports."

[nsaddict]

King Kelly has nothing on this guy! Pic appears blurry but clear in my file??

[BabyRuth]

Wacky items indeed!

[Joe_G.]

I started to dabble as an extension of my baseball interests such as Helen Dauvray Ward's Championship Cup and pendants that the Wolverines would win in 1887.



My interest in Goodwin & Co. cigarette packs and redemption coupons has extended well into the non-sport world. Its interesting to me to study and collect the items that were competing for the consumer's nickel.

[nat]

If you were buying smokes in 1888, would you know that you were going to get a baseball player when you picked out a particular pack, or were female banjo players (etc) put in the same packs?

[brianp-beme]

Even though, as I mentioned previously in this thread, I know squat about non-sports cards, that hasn't stopped me from gathering here and there some cards that appeal to me.

In a similar vein I believe the human race has, in general, populated the world without knowing squat beforehand how to raise offspring that is sometimes the result of such repopulating activity. And yet we have made it this far...

Brian

[polakoff]

Wow, incredibly informative answers and I’ve started to go down the research rabbit hole! Thanks to all who have commented, answered my questions, and even answered questions I didn’t know I had!

I have to know, what’s with the Hebrew Mick Jagger card???

[polakoff]

Originally Posted by nat

If you were buying smokes in 1888, would you know that you were going to get a baseball player when you picked out a particular pack, or were female banjo players (etc) put in the same packs?

Great question I’d also like to know the answer to!

[insidethewrapper]

Same as sports, some collectors specialize is a certain era or a certain subject.
You can collect whatever your interest is : music, rock and roll, movies, TV Shows, War Cards , humor etc. It's fun, you can collect The Beatles, or Mork & Mindy, Welcome back Kotter, Jaws, KISS, Mars Attack, Old Westerns, etc.

I'm surprized the non-sports card forum doesn't advertise more about their site. It is listed at the top right corner of this page. I don't see them advertise in "The Wrapper", a magazine about non-sports cards. Only 500 members, should be in the 10k range easy.

[swarmee]

In the tobacco years, the type of card wasn't really listed on the pack or box, to my knowledge. But the retailers would likely know what was packed out when people started opening them. Many of the Ginter or Goodwin sets were only released for a couple of months, so you could expect to get cards from those during that time, presuming the product didn't stay on the shelves for too long.

There was some research into the production and release dates, found in the old journals that I'm sure some of the guys (Joe G?) can link you to.

[tschock]

Hi David. If the only interests you have is baseball, then you have no need for non-sports cards. If you have any interests outside of baseball, then there is probably at least one (if not multiple) non-sports card set that covers that interest.

For various reasons, some of my favorite non-sports sets are the N2 American Indian Chiefs, the T77 Indian Life in the '60s (who doesn't enjoy a good bowl of Puppy Stew), the 1934 National Chicle Sky Birds (nothing screams Art Deco and the early fly days like this set), G-Men and Heroes of the Law, Laugh-In, and of course, Wacky Packages. Once you start poking around www.non-sport.com, I'm sure there's something you'll find that will drag you into the abyss.

[Johnny630]

My Walt Disney Darlings. Submitted Myself From A local Lutherville Md Find a few years back

[Johnny630]

More Beautiful Cards. Civil War News Cello Pack Pulled By self recently graded

[Johnny630]

So cool

[Johnny630]

So cool.

[Johnny630]

Last Little Group on my Non Sport Favs

[polakoff]

Thanks so much, everyone! You've given me tons of resources to explore.

Taylor, I was going to reach out to you specifically since you were my non-sport guy when I was in Raleigh...but figured I didn't want to burden you alone with the task of bringing me up to speed!