View Single Post
  #10  
Old 07-24-2018, 03:07 PM
rats60's Avatar
rats60 rats60 is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 2,898
Default

I think there are several factors. First is that football wasn't very popular until the 1970s. With Monday Night Football starting in 1970, you saw the popularity slowly rise through the 70's and 80's until it over took baseball in popularity. When the Miami Dolphins were playing in Super Bowl VII to complete their perfect 17-0 season, you could buy tickets outside the L.A. Coliseum for $5.00. Baseball was the #1 sport for about 100 years, so it has that history.

Next, card collecting was driven by kids. Kids who mostly played Little League. Kids are able to pick up baseball at an earlier age because of the smaller ball, compared to larger balls of football and basketball. I feel that at that younger age kids were driven more to baseball and baseball cards than to other sports.

Finally, baseball is a summer sport. Baseball cards were released in the summer when kids were out of school and had very little to do. Football cards were released in the fall when kids are in school all day for 5 days, have to do homework and chores and often had family activities on weekends. There just was very little time to collect during the school year.

When baseball cards took off as a collectible, it was driven by adults coming back to the hobby that they enjoyed from their youth. It wasn't until about 1989 that there was even any interest in football cards as a collectible and when you are talking about vintage cards, those collecting them would be collecting cards and players from an era when football wasn't popular. I collected the Topps sets from 1956 into the 90s, but I never had a strong connection to them. So, they were eventually sold off.
Reply With Quote