What's The Best Collectors' Item On eBay?

I've been collecting and selling early collectors cards and cigarette cards for over twenty years. Before you read this guide please subscribe to my card collecting newsletters for updates on rare cards and tips on buying by Clicking Here, thank you.

I don't think anyone can claim to know this for certain, but I believe that cigarette cards come close. I've been collecting cigarette cards and vintage trading cards for nearly a quarter of a century. I've collected many things over those years but, in my opinion, no other collectors' item comes close to cigarette cards and vintage trading cards. I think this is because they are information rich and very compact, which lends itself well to trading and sharing on the Internet. Stamps are certainly compact, but perhaps too much so. The stamp pictures are so small that you can hardly see them except with a magnifying glass, which precludes them from picture framing really. Unlike cigarette cards and trading cards, stamps don't have any text on the backs describing the pictures and so you can hardly call them educational.

Although cigarette cards were issued during a relatively short period of time (1870s-1940s) compared with say coins, it really is quality not quantity that counts. These cards captured the transition from the horse drawn cart through to the motorcar and airliner in a kaleidoscope of artwork, photography and textural information. As well as promoting the products they came with, the cards also helped build the celebrity status of talented sports people and the very first movie stars.

At a time when newspapers contained few pictures, the cards plugged the gap by providing vivid photos and artwork of the birth of our modern world: WW1 scenes, life changing inventions, the dawn of modern music and art, explorers in the farthest reaches of the planet and the seeds of space exploration itself. As stated by YouTube's geriatric1927 in an email he sent me: "Many of them were very educational".

In an age when books were still expensive to the average person, the information hungry public quickly took to the pastime of collecting cards. It's possible that the multi-million dollar tobacco manufacturers who issued these humble, everyday items as a powerful marketing tool unwittingly accelerated information democracy itself.

Thank you for reading my eBay article.