Trading Card Industry Expands into Football, Basketball, College

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into the hobby/business of sports trading cards. Even pro leagues and colleges are churning out cards, the NFL and Southern Cal at the moment, the NBA soon.

For years a New York gum manufacturer called Topps was about the sole source of baseball, football and basketball cards for collectors. We nutcases would buy the packs, throw away the lousy bubblegum and carefully save the little pasteboards in shoeboxes, or in albums with plastic pages.

Because of court decisions, Topps and its subsidiary, Bowman, are currently the only outfits allowed to peddle gum with cards, or cards with gum, but there is lots of competition in the card end of things from Fleer, …