The first officially recorded game in baseball took place on June 4th 1838. It was around this time that this sport began to pick up momentum in the US. As its popularity increased in leaps and bounds, in the heat of competition, it produced good and top notch players who became household brand names. Soon enough, fans started collecting top baseball cards with pictures of top players, winning teams, and so on. Collecting these sports cards was soon becoming a roaring business and hobby for most fans.
To popularize this game, baseball cards were freely distributed at street corners just before the start of an event. As the game became more and more popular in the US, people started preserving some of the well-made cards of top players and teams as momentos. Several years later, these mementoes were selling at a premium as top baseball cards, just like original paintings, coins, stamps, etc.
In mid 1945s, fans introduced “Rookie Cards”. These are top sports cards of beginners in this sport. If the beginner became a hero or a legend in later years, his Rookie Card would become a premium item in the market. With baseball fever running high in the U.S., many of the top cards were sold at a premium, and soon acquired the name as trade cards, since people began to buy them at a premium and sell them at a still higher premium. Very soon it spawned a slew of cheap manufacturers who began selling fakes as originals. In the process, both the originals and the fakes became very expensive. The true originals of the 1860s and 1900s began to be called as vintage cards. As the fakes flooded the market, these vintage cards became rare, as their value kept rising in the market.
Just like any original painting, coin or stamp, an expensive baseball card commands a premium of minimum U.S. $ 100,000/-. It must have cost hardly a dime or even a premium of a dollar in the year 1875 or thereabouts. These days, some of the original baseball cards of top notch players and teams of yesteryears, command a very high premium.