What happened to baseball cards in the 1920's?

[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.]

Originally Posted by 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.

I was thinking the same thing.

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

[rhettyeakley]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

[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?".

[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/t...902-amendment/