1890s football card

This photograph, found on the web, shows a football card for Boston Grammar School made by J Baines of Bradford and advertising Pears Soap. It is thought to date from the 1890s.

John Baines is the originator of the hobby of collecting, swapping, and selling football cards and stickers.

In 1887, John Baines, a toy retailer from Bradford, filed a patent describing "a new means or method of illustrating the play and players of football", later called "football cards". Baseball cards had been popular in the US since the 1860s, and Baines thought football cards might become just as popular in Britain. His cards were cut into the shape of a shield and featured depictions of teams and kits, with sketches of popular players. They were sold in packets of six for a halfpenny (worth around 20p today). Baines went on to produce rugby and cricket cards, and eventually covered scores of different sports, from golf and tennis to horse racing and bowls. But it was the football cards that made his fortune, and saw him adopt the title of "The Football Card King".

Baines produced hundreds of thousands of football cards each year, operating from his "Dolls' Hospital" toy sales and repair shop on Bradford's North Parade. Something of an eccentric, he distributed his cards from a distinctive carriage pulled by a horse with a monkey on its back. As well as covering professional clubs, Baines produced cards for hundreds of amateur and local clubs.

The cards were promoted via various prize competitions, which could be won by finding certain "medal cards", by collecting piles of empty packets, or by submitting mini essays with winning efforts printed on the back of subsequent cards. Most prominently, Baines offered football jerseys to whoever could collect a specific list of cards, set out on posters in shop windows. Some of the listed cards were particularly hard to find.

External Links

• Meet John Baines – the eccentric inventor of football cards (by Paul Brown) - WSC: When Saturday Comes
• Baines Cards - The Huddersfied Town Collection
• Baines Football Cards - Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)