30 May 2025

By Bill Miller

If you are of a certain vintage, then you remember baseball cards. In 1951 Topps brand found a good marketing formula when they included five cards in a pack with a slab of bubblegum. Kids collected them and often would flip the cards in the school yard to, hopefully, win cards for their collection. Today some of those vintage baseball cards command huge prices to serious collectors. When gifts are packaged with a product they are called premiums – think Cracker Jacks.

This marketing idea dates back to the 1880s. Instead of bubblegum, a pack of cigarettes came with a card. A couple of companies began rolling tobacco into cigarettes and selling them in a handy ten-pack size. These packages needed blank cards to stiffen them. Soon these companies realized that advertising on the cards had potential.

By the 1880s cigarette companies hit upon the idea of printing sets of images on the cards. These sets would entice smokers to collect the cards. The first sets were vibrant chromolithographic images and they focused on sports stars. Allen & Ginter of Richmond, Virginia, and Goodwin Company of New York Old Judge brand were a couple of the first cigarette companies to print images on the cards.

The Allen & Ginter company printed the first sports series in 1887, The World’s Champions, series N28. They were about 2-3/4 x 1-1/2”. Each pack contained one card. There were fifty cards in the set: ten baseball players, ten pugilists (boxing), ten oarsmen, seven wrestlers, seven billiard players, four rifle shooters and two pool players. This demonstrates that in 1887 rowing, baseball and boxing held equal public attention.

Printed on the backside was the list of the cards in the set.

The oarsmen in the set were the great professional scullers of the 1880s.

In 1888 Allen & Ginter realized that they hit upon a huge marketing opportunity. They printed a colorful 6 x 8” album of the series. The images were printed the same size as the single cards so some people trimmed the pages to make single cards. These cards were thinner than the single card edition and don’t show Allen & Ginter’s title on the front.

Next in 1888 they followed with a new set of The World‘s Champions – N29 series. In this series all the champions were different from the 1887 series and the two professional scullers were William East and William O’Connor.

Also in 1888, they, again printed the 6 x 8 inch album – A17.

Allen & Ginter produced a cigarette twenty pack and they printed larger cards, N43 series 2-7/8 x 3-1/2” duplicating the 1888 N29 series (Wm East and Wm O’Connor).

Allen & Ginter wasn’t the only brand that included these sports premiums in their cigarette packs. In 1888 Goodwin Company, New York, printed the Old Judge & Gypsy Queen series. The N162 series depicted four oarsmen: Edward Hanlan, William Beach, Jake Gaudaur, John Teemer.

They, too, printed an album – A36.

Other companies and brands followed the lead of Allen & Ginter and Goodwin Company. Thomas Hall Company Between The Acts & Bravo Cigarettes of Brooklyn printed card sets. There were two professional scullers out of the twelve-card set N342 series.

W.S. Kimball & Co’s., Champions of Games and Sports, Rochester, NY, printed their series of fifty champions – N184. Edward Hanlan, Champion Sculler of Americaand William Beach, Champion Oarsman of the World were their two rowing champions.

In 1888 they, too, produced an album – A42

All of these cigarette companies printed many other series besides sports champions. Allen & Ginter produced the World’s Dudes with the Rowing Club caricature.

At the beginning of the 20th Century other premiums were offered such as printed felts, silks and a few leather patches. These were somewhat larger than the sports cards. Murad Cigarettes led the way producing these premiums with college crew’s images.

Note – Recently, Topps has reproduced the Allen & Ginter and Kimball series cards. The original 1887 “base ball player” cards are extremely sought after and bring crazy prices.