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Posted By: jay behrens

The progression of baseball cards has nothing to do with the progression of baseball itself. The first great wave of cards was in the late 1880s and disappeared along with Victorian age scrapbooking. The next great wave came with inserts in ATC cigarettes and then caramel cards so taht the kids could also get cards. This came to an end with break up of ATC under the new anti-trust laws. The next wave came at the end of great depression and ended with WW2. The madern age start after age WW2 and explosion of the card collecting can be traced to the court ruling allowing Donruss and Fleer into the market and the eventual growth into literally one set of cards per player being released each year.

There is nothing taht happened within baseball that directly drove the production or lack of production of cards.

Jay