At what point...

[mintacular]

did the worth of the cardboard baseball card actually trump the value of the actual product being sold (gum, cigarette, candy, etc.)? Thank you

[Volod]

You mean from the point of view of the consumer, or from the perspective of what - an investor? As a kid ripping open waxpacks in the 1950's, I never even bothered with the gum. It was the cards that I and every other schoolyard twerp wanted. However, as I understand it, around the turn of the last century, the cards were regarded as minor inducements to buy the main product, which was in most cases, tobacco. It seems likely that the relative value to the consumer flipped not long after gum or cheap candy replaced tobacco.

[ALR-bishop]

The book The Card by OKeefe and Thompson ( which is mainly about the background of the PSA 8 Wagner cards)has some historical narrative about hobby in general and the use of cards to promote tobacco and confectionary products.

I mentioned in another thread that post war,Topps never had a monopoly or exclusive contracts with players to sell their baseball cards. To avoid anti trust issues their contracts only specified that they had the exclusive right to market the players' likeness with gum/candy/confections. Otherswere free to market cards by themselves or with cookies ( Fleer 63) or marbles (Leaf 61), but Topps at the time seems to have established "the market" as cards and gum.

I agree with Volod that when buying packs as a kid in the late 50s I did not care much about the gum, except for that wonderful and exotic smell when you opened the packs

[bn2cardz]

http://www.oldcardboard.com/t/t206/I...al-edition.pdf

In the above article by Scot Reader it indicates that for young boys it was happening as early as 1909. On page 15-16 of the above PDF it references an article in a 1909 article “The Small Boy’s Mania" in which it talks about young boys buying packs of cigarettes to obtain the cards then the would peddle the cigarettes.

The entire PDF was an interesting read, but the article was very interesting when I ran across it a while back.

[doug.goodman]

My earliest memories of buying packs of Topps cards involves a stack of cards and a stack of gum, then sorting the cards while ignoring the gum.

Doug

[ALR-bishop]

Doug ---you didn't even check to see if any of the gum pieces might have had the image of a famous person on them ?

[Volod]

Hmmn, I wonder if I could have walked into a cigar store as an eight-year-old in 1953, plunked down a couple bucks on the counter and bought a pouch of Redman to get the attached cards. Imagine the proprietor wouldn't even have thought twice about making the sale. Ma would really have freaked seeing me spit a big wad, I'll bet.

[Bob Lemke]

Steve . . .

Red Man wasn't in a pouch in the early 1950s, it was a cardboard box. The card was attached by a waxy paper outer wrapper.

[Volod]

Originally Posted by Bob Lemke

Steve . . .

Red Man wasn't in a pouch in the early 1950s, it was a cardboard box. The card was attached by a waxy paper outer wrapper.

Cardboard pouch, eh? Afraid I haven't seen any that survived. Only saw the cards back then because my chewing father tossed them my way. Thanks Bob.

[Gary Dunaier]

I seem to recall sometime during the 1980s that there was some kind of a REQUIREMENT that card packs include 'something of value' (gum, stickers, puzzle pieces, what have you). For example, Donruss' 1982 product was "puzzle and cards"...



...and I've always wondered why cards couldn't be sold on their own merits, as they are today. (And if this was the case, how was Topps able to get away with selling rack packs which had nothing BUT cards?)

[ALR-bishop]

Not aware of any requirement. From what authority would such a requirement originate ? My assumption has been that the "need" to sell the card with something else was originally market driven, and then came to be expected by that market, and that once Topps established that the "market" expectation was gum, attempts by others to break that expectation did not fare well.

After 1981 when Marvin Miller had helped break the Topps exclusive gum/confections contract, everyone started using gum. Then manufacturers had to find other things to put in the packs to distinguish themselves for those buyers who wanted more than just the cards.

Even during the heart of the Topps monopoly period in the 1960s and early 70s, it often included insert items with cards to help stimulate sales

[Volod]

Some very good points, Al. It seems to me that manufacturers have always sought to add some value to their base product by exploiting the popularity of some other cultural phenonmenon, especially if it was free or of little cost to them to do so. For most of the last century that phenomenon was professional sports, and it moved a lot of stuff, including tobacco, gum and candy. It's hard to think of anything more effective to induce an eight to twelve-year-old consumer to buy a product. So, in my view, it has to be the advent of televised sports - and its greater marketability - that marked the point at which the original base product, like gum, became secondary - or maybe even irrelevant.

[Rich Klein]

rack packs for many years before their monopoly ended in 1980. When Fleer and Donruss joined the parade in 1981, all three companies had gum in their packs. Topps sued and won to be the only company that could insert gum.

Thus the other companies looked for other items to enhance their card sales. That was not a legal requirement, rather a corporate decision to try to compete with Topps.

Eventually those "enhancement" evolved into insert cards and then went from there into what we have today. If you think of "insert" cards, in realit y they are just pack enhancements on steroids.

Rich

[almostdone]

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

rack packs for many years before their monopoly ended in 1980. When Fleer and Donruss joined the parade in 1981, all three companies had gum in their packs. Topps sued and won to be the only company that could insert gum.

Thus the other companies looked for other items to enhance their card sales. That was not a legal requirement, rather a corporate decision to try to compete with Topps.

Eventually those "enhancement" evolved into insert cards and then went from there into what we have today. If you think of "insert" cards, in realit y they are just pack enhancements on steroids.

Rich

Good point Rich. What I wonder is when did the base cards become obsolete so only the "insentive insert" is what most people buy the packs for?

If you go on the assumption that the chase cards were the insert insentives it seems that card collecting has reverted back to its original origins. Buy a product with the insert to be the primary insentive to purchase more.
Drew