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Posted By: warshawlaw

By “important” I am considering importance to the growth and development of the card collecting hobby, not the rarest, not the most expensive. Perhaps call it most influential cards or sets of cards.

N167 baseball players (1st tobacco cards; had these failed, bye bye hobby)
T206 Wagner (The Holy Grail)
T206 Plank (The Holy Grail’s bastard brother)
1952 Topps Mantle (the harbinger of the price explosion)
1957 Topps set (standard baseball card size parameters established)
1974 Topps set (first Topps non-series set)
1981 Fleer Craig Nettles (the main error card touching off mania over the 1981 offerings)
1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. (the rise of super-premium cards)
1990 Upper Deck Reggie Jackson autograph insert card (the 1st insert card)