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History Of Basketball Cards
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Published: August 30, 2006
Basketball Cards
The Olmecs of the ancient Aztec civilization are often historically credited with inventing basketball. Colorful drawings and wall carvings illustrate a competitive blood-sport that involved two men, a courtyard, a solid rubber ball (about the size of a human head), and death. Sadly, the opponent who was unable to land the ball into the proper receptacle of the court lost his head...literally.
Some may say today's derivation is just as cut-throat (pun slightly intended), but that's another issue for another day.
Basketball, as we formally know it, is a creation of Dr. James Naismith. Dr. Naismith developed basketball from a childhood game called duck-on-a-rock in his native Almonte, Ontario, Canada, where the object of the game was to , you guessed it, knock a duck off a rock. By the time Dr. Naismith reached the United States, he was a sports therapist for the YMCA of Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1891, he created an indoor sports therapy/training exercise for athletes during the winter off-season. The therapy game had thirteen rules, which time and the NBA have capriciously taken liberty in revising. From this exercise came the basketball we play and watch today.
Fast-forwarding some years later to the mid-1910's, basketball was minimally played by small organizations and colleges on the East Coast. Eventually, basketball gained small popularity within a predominantly Jewish professional league, but it isn't until about 1948 when we first see basketball cards printed. These cards are rare and few and have the same success as baseball cards of this era.
Topps tried to popularize basketball cards in 1957 with very little initial success. Low sponsorship and patronage of basketball as a professional sport impeded basketball card production. Basketball cards were in direct competition with baseball cards, at a moment when baseball was the nationally broadcasted sweetheart sport of the masses. The nation was not quite ready for basketball or basketball cards until around 1966.
As the 1960's gives rising momentum to a basketball craze in America, basketball card collecting takes off, much like baseball card collecting thirty years earlier.
By the 1970's and onward, basketball cards had gained a prestige and ubiquity somewhat comparable to baseball cards. Basketball cards were mass produced (and still are) by such well-known and established printers as Topps, Upper Deck, and Fleer.
Today, vintage basketball cards of legendary likes such as Bob Pettit and Bob Cousy can run from the mid to high thousands. However, newer legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Byrd, and Michael Jordan have the unique ability of attaining and retaining as high (and sometimes higher) a value. Whether old or new, basketball cards are a wise investment well worth the money spent.
Even though basketball cards got a much later start than baseball cards, basketball cards are a befitting tribute to one of America's and the world's finest professional sports.
The Olmecs of the ancient Aztec civilization are often historically credited with inventing basketball. Colorful drawings and wall carvings illustrate a competitive blood-sport that involved two men, a courtyard, a solid rubber ball (about the size of a human head), and death. Sadly, the opponent who was unable to land the ball into the proper receptacle of the court lost his head...literally.
Some may say today's derivation is just as cut-throat (pun slightly intended), but that's another issue for another day.
Basketball, as we formally know it, is a creation of Dr. James Naismith. Dr. Naismith developed basketball from a childhood game called duck-on-a-rock in his native Almonte, Ontario, Canada, where the object of the game was to , you guessed it, knock a duck off a rock. By the time Dr. Naismith reached the United States, he was a sports therapist for the YMCA of Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1891, he created an indoor sports therapy/training exercise for athletes during the winter off-season. The therapy game had thirteen rules, which time and the NBA have capriciously taken liberty in revising. From this exercise came the basketball we play and watch today.
Fast-forwarding some years later to the mid-1910's, basketball was minimally played by small organizations and colleges on the East Coast. Eventually, basketball gained small popularity within a predominantly Jewish professional league, but it isn't until about 1948 when we first see basketball cards printed. These cards are rare and few and have the same success as baseball cards of this era.
Topps tried to popularize basketball cards in 1957 with very little initial success. Low sponsorship and patronage of basketball as a professional sport impeded basketball card production. Basketball cards were in direct competition with baseball cards, at a moment when baseball was the nationally broadcasted sweetheart sport of the masses. The nation was not quite ready for basketball or basketball cards until around 1966.
As the 1960's gives rising momentum to a basketball craze in America, basketball card collecting takes off, much like baseball card collecting thirty years earlier.
By the 1970's and onward, basketball cards had gained a prestige and ubiquity somewhat comparable to baseball cards. Basketball cards were mass produced (and still are) by such well-known and established printers as Topps, Upper Deck, and Fleer.
Today, vintage basketball cards of legendary likes such as Bob Pettit and Bob Cousy can run from the mid to high thousands. However, newer legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Byrd, and Michael Jordan have the unique ability of attaining and retaining as high (and sometimes higher) a value. Whether old or new, basketball cards are a wise investment well worth the money spent.
Even though basketball cards got a much later start than baseball cards, basketball cards are a befitting tribute to one of America's and the world's finest professional sports.
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