Top baseball card by Decade
Always an interesting subject.
Here's one person's list:
1900s: 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner 1910s: 1916 M101-4 Sporting News Babe Ruth 1920s: 1921 E121 American Caramel Babe Ruth 1930s: 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth 1940s: 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson 1950s: 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle 1960s: 1968 Topps Nolan Ryan 1970s: 1973 Topps Mike Schmidt/Ron Cey/John Hilton 1980s: 1982 Topps Cal Ripken 1990s: 1993 Upper Deck SP Derek Jeter 2000s: 2001 Topps Chrome Albert Pujols or Ichiro Suzuki 2010s: 2018 Bowman Chrome Shohei Ohtani |
![]() ![]() 1981 Fleer Baseball
Collector's were excited when they heard Fleer was re-entering the
baseball card market. Their prior issues, the 1959 Fleer Ted Williams
set and their 1963 Fleer baseball-Star sets were hgue succeses.
What did they have up their sleeve ???
Click for complete
1981 Fleer Baseball Checklist, Values & Info
The answer was NOTHING ! What a mess. Awful ! Poorly printed on medicore card stock, the images were even worse. Then to cap it off, Fleer introduced tons of errors into their set. Some think it was done on purpose to force collector's to keep collecting. Nearly all were useless. The only one to draw much attention was the Graig Nettles variations. One had his name spelled Craig on back. WOW !!!
TOP ROOKIES: Hall-of-Famers Tim Raines and Harold Baines. Oother rookies of note were Danny Ainge, later a pro with the Boston Celtics and World Series hero Kirk Gibson. Note: You may be on that page right now. |
The first baseball trading cards date back to 1869. For many years, baseball cards were packaged in packs of tobacco as a way to increase sales the same way that today prizes are packaged in boxes of cereal. In the 1920's and 1930's, candy and gum companies started packaging baseball cards in their products as well.
Baseball card production was virtually halted in the early 1940's due to paper shortages created by World War II. The "Modern Era" of baseball cards began in 1948 when Bowman Gum Inc. offered one card and one piece of gum in a pack for a penny.
The first important football set was the Mayo set featuring college players in 1984. Other than the 1935 National Chicle set no other key football set was issued until 1948 when noth Bowman and Leaf produced sets.