Cards Mania: Uncovering the Hidden Gems and Surprising Facts of Trading Cards

This Was Always My Favorite Part – Did You Know? As the first fun fact in what I hope becomes a long-running series, let’s rewind to one of Topps’ most curious creations: the Hocus Focus Magic Photo cards. From the very beginning, trading card producers knew that cards weren’t just collectibles—they were marketing tools. To stay ahead of the game, companies like Topps had to innovate. Cigarette cards had their time, but the 1940s needed something new. 🃏 Blank Cards With a Twist? Imagine opening a pack and seeing... nothing. Blank cards. But no misprint here! In 1948–49, Topps released a set where the magic only appeared with water and a special blue "magic paper" overlay. After wetting the card and applying the paper, an image of a player or actor would reveal itself—like a cardboard sorcery trick. 🗂️ The Set and Checklist The full set included 252 photo cards across sports (baseball, football, basketball, boxing) and entertainment (m...

Before we talk a bit about Pokémon  card  game , we definitely should write a few words on where all did come from :) Long time ago a man called Satoshi Tajiri , big fan of bugs (some say, he wanted to become an entomologist) started to create games. His (and his friends) first productions were Pulseman , Yoshi and Mario & Wario . Those games were not a big success, but they were quite popular on the market. After some time, around 1990, still having this "bug geek" thoughts, Satoshi realized, that this might work out and invented Pocket Monsters. Nintendo was his first choice. It took some time to convince Nintendo to his idea, but when he finally did it, he immediately began working on the game ...

Nowadays, trading cards, collectible cards and all other cards are huge business with millions of dollars behind it. It doesn`t matter if it is a sport card, movie card or just a card released to promote something. Some are valued few cents, other can reach up millions for a single card. Have You ever wondered how it began? Well... this is a short story about it. Some say, that it all started somewhere around 1880 when John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter set up a company named... yes, you are right: Allen & Ginter. I will not focus on its history as a tobacco company obviously (nowadays its not politically correct to talk about cigs;), but Allen & Ginter had a very interesting idea of how to develop marketing of their products. Cigarette manufacturers were using paper cards putted inside cig packs to prevent cigarettes from being squeezed. They created and introduced cigarette card for collecting and trading purposes. Now the trade mark of Allen & Ginter is used by some other c...