Supplies History - Toploaders?

[BioCRN]

I've casually wondered for years about card storage in the 1950s+ since my exposure to the hobby came in the early 80s.

I don't remember when toploaders/penny sleeves became common or even highly used storage in my area, but I remember 9-card sheets in binders being a thing.

I do wonder about stuff that happened before I was old enough to pay attention. You don't see many cards being glued into albums with 1950s+ cards, unlike decades earler. They can't all have been just thrown into a box or similar...maybe.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by BioCRN

They can't all have been just thrown into a box or similar...maybe.

I'm guessing the vast majority of 1950's and 60's collections that survived in decent shape were in boxes of some kind at some time. I always used shoeboxes as a kid for the most inexpensive common cards, even into the late 1980's and early 90's. As a result, I still have some of them that my childhood shoes came in, even though the shoes themselves are now long gone, lol. Plastic pages and albums / binders predated toploaders from all I can tell, but even these were not available until sometime in the mid-1970's.

Though I just assumed it was earlier, I'm guessing from what I have seen today that "toploaders" as we know them now were kind of a mid-to-late 1980's advent. In hobby publication ads I have from 1985, you don't see toploaders. By 1989, you do.