Quote:
Originally Posted by barrysloate
There are several characteristics which constitute what we all agree is a baseball card:
1) It's a rectangular piece of cardboard that depicts a baseball player or several players.
2) It's typically distributed to advertise a product, such as tobacco, candy, or gum.
3) It's widely distributed to the greatest number of people possible.
4) If you collect the whole bunch of them you will be able to complete a set.
|
As kids we all would have agreed with the above (people my age, anyway), but I think you're assuming a lot, thinking we all are in agreement now.
For instance, I don't consider postcards to be 'baseball cards'. I also don't consider any mounted photograph to be a baseball card - in my opinion, they are mounted photographs. We even have more specific terms for them, such as 'cabinet photograph', or 'cart-de-visite'. Even if they advertise something;e.g-'Peck & Snyder', I don't consider them to be baseball cards. Perhaps it's the 'distribution' aspect you mention, or that such items aren't generally part of a 'set' (at least, a set of any meaningful size). But to me it doesn't matter - I collect both baseball cards and mounted photographs, and it doesn't matter to me what anyone else calls them.