Interest in them surged in the 1990s, when card companies started selling entire sets of baseball, football, or hockey cards, and anybody with the money could buy them. When anybody could buy complete sets, and the market was flooded with complete sets, they were not the investment they once were, and interest thus waned.
But back in the 1960s and 1970s, you could only buy them in packs that came with a stick of bubblegum. If you wanted to complete your collection of, say, the 1967 Yankees, you had to buy cards, and because it was unlikely you’d get only Yankees cards in every pack, you would trade them with other collectors: “Hey, you’ve got a Mickey Mantle. You want to trade him for my Carl Yastrzemski?” That’s what made those old collections so valuable–the fact that they were difficult to complete.
Nearly everything in pop culture was turned into trading cards. I still have some Batman cards from the 1960s TV show. I also remember Partridge Family cards, Danger Man (or was it The Prisoner?) cards, Hulk Hogan’s Rock 'n Wrestling cards, and others. Use a clothespin to attach them to the forks on your bicycle, and now, you sound like you’re riding a motorcycle. Great fun!
It’s hard enough now to find a clothespin, let alone a package of five trading cards and a stick of bubblegum.
…trading cards are huge–it’s just that there’s a “game” component to all of them now… but what’s the difference between trying to get a rare baseball card then and trying to get a rare Pokémon or Magic The Gathering card today? Other than the internet making it easy to just buy it if you want it but kids still buy packs of ‘trading cards’ today… No gum though…no gum…
