John Baines
1880
Trade card collecting has long been a favourite amongst collectors, be it sports cards, cigarette cards, old and young like to collect them. Today, when football cards are mentioned, it is Pannini football stickers that most people first think of, but the concept was first devised way back in the 1880's by a toy retailer from Bradford, John Baines. Baines, filed a patent describing "a new means or method of illustrating the play and players of football", later categorised as "football cards" back on 15th October 1887. Baseball cards had long been popular in the US and Baines thought football cards could be just as popular in Britain. His patented football cards were initially based around sides from the north of England as well as Scotland, but by the 1890's they had expanded to the rest of the UK. Baines went on to produce not only football cards but eventually covered scores of different sports, from golf, cricket, tennis to horse racing and bowls and just about any kind of sporting affiliations in just about every city, town and village in the land! Finally, in 1926 the enterprise was sold to a Barnsley firm although by this time cigarette cards were capturing the appeal of collectors.
Golf cards from the post-1910 era feature amateur golfers, professionals, golfing scenes and golf clubs in colours in black, blue, green, red and sepia tones.
Swapping was one means of completing your set, another was through a popular playground game, "skaging" or "who's nearest?". This
Trade card collecting has long been a favourite amongst collectors, be it sports cards, cigarette cards, old and young like to collect them. Today, when football cards are mentioned, it is Pannini football stickers that most people first think of, but the concept was first devised way back in the 1880's by a toy retailer from Bradford, John Baines. Baines, filed a patent describing "a new means or method of illustrating the play and players of football", later categorised as "football cards" back on 15th October 1887. Baseball cards had long been popular in the US and Baines thought football cards could be just as popular in Britain. His patented football cards were initially based around sides from the north of England as well as Scotland, but by the 1890's they had expanded to the rest of the UK. Baines went on to produce not only football cards but eventually covered scores of different sports, from golf, cricket, tennis to horse racing and bowls and just about any kind of sporting affiliations in just about every city, town and village in the land! Finally, in 1926 the enterprise was sold to a Barnsley firm although by this time cigarette cards were capturing the appeal of collectors.
Golf cards from the post-1910 era feature amateur golfers, professionals, golfing scenes and golf clubs in colours in black, blue, green, red and sepia tones.
Swapping was one means of completing your set, another was through a popular playground game, "skaging" or "who's nearest?". This
entailed some skill as players would take turns to flick their cards against a wall in a winner-takes-all contest. Repeated games would cause damage to the cards, which is one of the reasons why good condition examples are very scarce today.
54 ITEMS
