THE HISTORY OF SPORTS MEMORABILIA
The other day I was cataloguing three boxes of baseball cards for a friend of mine and I began to think about how this entire card collecting and sports memorabilia phenomenon began. If you are a closet fan (as I am) of shows on television that travel from city to city checking out and pricing antiques for the general public, youd be aware of the fact that often sports memorabilia is brought to the shows for assessment. So this tells me that a lot of people out there have sports memorabilia that they consider to be antiques, so collecting of sports memorabilia has been around for a long time.
WHEN DID SPORTS MEMORABILIA COLLECTING BEGIN?
If its true that nothing says USA like baseball does, then its natural that sports memorabilia collecting in this country began with a connection to the American pastime of baseball. Tobacco Companies introduced baseball cards to Americans in the late 1800s in an attempt to sell their products. When I was younger I had always thought that the Bubble Gum Companies such as Topps first introduced baseball cards, but bubble gum baseball cards were really a product of the fifties and sixties....