What happened to baseball cards in the 1920's?

[darkhorse9]

Baseball was huge in the 1920's with Babe Ruth and other legends. Baseball cards were proven to be hot commodity in the past. So why come there are basically no cards made in that entire decade.

The war was over, the economy was fine with depression not coming till the end of the decade.

There were a couple of American Caramel sets, some Exhibits and a bunch of ugly strip cards. 1924 alone has to be the worst year in the history of baseball cards.

Any ideas?

[rhettyeakley]

I am a big fan of the 1920's cards so I may be a bit biased but I don't really feel like they were as neglected as the perception is today. There were quite a few sets produced but they are generally viewed by today's standards as being "boring" especially when compared to the crazy boom from 1909-1911 and then the "Gum Card" era of the 1930's. In reality there are quite a few "dead years" in baseball card history... 1918-1920 are perhaps the worst years for baseball cards, which is a shame because who wouldn't want more Black Sox cards? 1924-1926 would be a pretty close 2nd but at least you have the Exhibit sets those years

I think one of the biggest reasons for the somewhat "boring" 1920's sets is actually the advances in photography and the world's ability to capture real "ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY" which prior to 1910 was pretty much impossible and even between 1910-1915 was not easy to do. Thus, in the 1915-1930 era the consumer wanted action photos of their favorite ballplayers and not the old-fashioned and sometimes cartoonish lithography of the previous era.

[oldeboo]

Interesting topic and there are many possible explanations...

My main theory revolves around microeconomics and the evolution of baseball cards.

An example I think of from the 1920s is the W575-1 family of cards. You have similar cards produced with merely different backs. Why? Well, I'd assume cost. The cards weren't the primary product, but distributed in the hopes of boosting sales and gaining repeat customers hunting cards. Why didn't all of the W575-1 advertisers make their own unique cards? Probably cost. Let us just say that a piece of candy was selling for 5 cents. Let's assume that with all of your costs it took 2 cents to produce that candy and the cards cost 1 cent. That leaves you with a profit of 2 cents. (just throwing numbers out there) Was it worth it? Should you make your own unique cards for 2 cents? Or not offer them at all? I'm sure many companies during that time period were contemplating those questions.

When you look at some of the earlier tobacco cards, then compare them to say, the later 1933 Goudey cards, it was there for the taking. I'm sure cards similar to the Goudey cards could have been produced and popularized in the 1920s, but they just weren't. It's a whole other topic, however I think there are some parallels to the Goudey cards. 1933 seems to be the most popular set, and it was produced in one of the worst years of the depression. The 1934 set again was pretty popular, but after that I'd say there was a decline. The larger economy was slowly recovering, so that's not a huge excuse in my opinion, so again it comes down to the microeconomics of the Goudey company getting players on their cards with their own troubles and profitability issues. Then of course comes WWII. For having such a wildly popular set in 1933, they just never figured it out for the long haul.

1949 Leaf cards again were rather popular, yet they didn't stick around and produce cards year after year after year. Why? These early heavy players in the card industry just had a hard time making it work while focusing on their primary products. I think some of these cards from the 1930s and 1940s help to explain what was going on with cards in the 1920s.

[seanofjapan]

Is it possible that kids had better toys to play with in the 20s? It kind of makes sense that Goudey cards came out in the depression years since pieces of cardboard are a very cheap gift for a kid whose parents are down on their luck. But during the twenties when families were more affluent they’d buy their kids better stuff, so there wasn’t much of a market?

I live in Japan and there is a similar explanation offered for the development of cards over time here too. In the years right after WW2 the country was dirt poor and most kids were only given cardboard or paper toys (including baseball cards, menko) because that was all anyone could afford to buy for their kids. By the 1960s the economy had recovered and better toys were available, so baseball card production almost completely ceased for about a decade from the mid 60s to early 70s, after which the biggest modern maker, Calbee, began putting them in bags of chips which is where Japan’s modern hobby was born.

[insidethewrapper]

Maybe in the 1920's people were buying and he economy was so good that there was no need to add a baseball card to their product to sell it. In the 1930's during a great depression you would have thought there would have been no cards, but maybe adding a card to the product was needed to make the sale. Just a thought.

[Mike D.]

Maybe in the 1920's people were buying and he economy was so good that there was no need to add a baseball card to their product to sell it. In the 1930's during a great depression you would have thought there would have been no cards, but maybe adding a card to the product was needed to make the sale. Just a thought.

I was thinking the same thing.

For years the Red Sox did no “giveaways”...because they sold out anyway.

[rhettyeakley]

Maybe in the 1920's people were buying and he economy was so good that there was no need to add a baseball card to their product to sell it. In the 1930's during a great depression you would have thought there would have been no cards, but maybe adding a card to the product was needed to make the sale. Just a thought.

If we are speaking only as to why there are relatively fewer card sets then I believe this is pretty much the answer.

In the 1880's there were major Tobacco producers literally at war with one another and one of the major ways they out sold their competitors was via their inserts. Once Duke formed their monopoly and formed the American Tobacco Co. in 1890 there was no need to invest the tens of thousands of dollars a year into the insert market because they owned the market. At that point we see a precipitous decline in the number of tobacco cards of all kinds being made between the years 1890-1892 all the way until really 1909.

The funny thing is that we think that Tobacco cards just ceased to exist during those years (especially in the baseball card world) but in reality The American Tobacco Co was still churning out millions of tobacco cards every year but they didn't really distribute them within the United States (where they had the monopoly) but outside the USA. These cards are what are in the ACC as T400-T499 cards... cards made and packaged in the USA but distributed in largely other countries (like the T215 Pirate Cigarette cards, which if Burdick had known about he would have assigned them a T400-T499 number)

[Luke]

It's funny how everyone sees things differently. The 20s are my second favorite decade for cards (behind the 1910s). The endless variety of the e121 family of cards and brands is one of the best sets (or grouping of sets) ever produced. The Exhibit sets and Exhibit Style Postcards are amazing. Oxford and Diaz sets are great, r315, Wm Paterson, Spalding Champions, and Zeenuts are all great sets.

[qed2190]

I agree with Luke.

[Lobo Aullando]

On the gap around the turn of the 20th Century, there was also a law that was in place on tobacco-related inserts.

https://prewarcards.com/2019/02/11/tobacco-card-ban-cigarette-cards-end-1897-1902-amendment/

[brianp-beme]

The 1920's was another great Prewar decade for baseball cards, and I also believe just second to the 1910 era. You just have to shift gears and appreciate the black and white photographic aesthetic. The 1910 era will probably continue to reign supreme, because of the color artwork on most of the issues, but also because of the huge availability and interest in various sets (hello T206 and Cracker Jacks, for example). No set in the 1920's comes anywhere close to the availability of even the T205 set.

But as mentioned, there are great and interesting sets during the decade that deserve some attention and respect, and below are pictured some of my favorites from the decade (not all mine), just for the fadoodle of it.

Brian

[riggs336]

Those are some great cards from some great sets.
But they reminded me of what my then five-year old daughter once asked me, "Daddy, did they have color when you were a boy?".