From Tobacco Cards to AR: 150 Years of Collecting Fandom
Modern collecting traces back roughly 150 years, from 1880s tobacco cards through 1930s Disney merchandise, the 1938 birth of superhero comics, 1977 Star Wars toys, the 1990s speculation boom and bust, and the 2000s grading and eBay era. Digital editions are the newest chapter, applying the hobby's oldest lessons: limited supply, provenance, and condition.
Every generation thinks it invented collecting. Every generation is wrong. The hobby is at least 150 years old, and each era taught a lesson the next one carried forward. Here’s the whole sweep - and why the newest chapter looks so familiar.
1880s: cards in cigarette packs
Tobacco companies started slipping small cards into cigarette packs - stiffeners that doubled as advertising. Baseball players, actresses, flags, birds. People kept them. Traded them. Chased full sets.
The lesson: the set is the hook. Give people a numbered checklist and something in the human brain lights up. Every card game and every rarity tier since runs on this circuit.
1930s: Mickey Mouse invents fan merchandise
Disney figured out that people didn’t just want to watch Mickey - they wanted to own him. Watches, figurines, buttons, books. Character merchandise became an industry, and the idea that a fictional character could be a thing you collect was born.
The lesson: fandom is the fuel. People collect what they love, and the love comes first.
1938: the Golden Age of comics
Action Comics #1 hits newsstands, Superman is born, and comics explode. Nobody saved them - they were disposable entertainment, read to shreds and pulped in wartime paper drives. Which is exactly why the survivors became the most valuable comics ever sold.
The lesson: scarcity you don’t plan is the strongest kind. The books nobody protected became the grails.
1977: Star Wars rewires the toy aisle
Kenner couldn’t make figures fast enough for Christmas 1977, so they famously sold an empty box with a certificate promising toys later. The modern collector-toy industry starts here - and its grails, like the rocket-firing Boba Fett prototype, follow the same first-and-scarce logic as comics. We covered that whole saga in the most valuable action figures ever.
The lesson: the earliest version wins. First runs, prototypes, and errors are the toy world’s first appearances.
1990s: the boom that taught everyone humility
Comics and cards went mainstream as “investments.” Publishers responded with massive print runs, holographic covers, and endless #1 issues. Millions of people bought ten copies of the same comic, sealed them in plastic - and watched them become worthless, because everyone saved them.
The lesson, learned the hard way: scarcity matters more than hype. A collectible printed in the millions isn’t rare, no matter how shiny the cover. The 90s bust is the hobby’s cautionary tale, and every era since has been shaped by it.
2000s: grading, eBay, and provenance
CGC and PSA turned condition into a science - a sealed, graded, tamper-proof number. eBay turned every attic into a global marketplace. Suddenly a comic’s grade and its history could be verified, and prices reflected it.
The lesson: trust is infrastructure. Provenance and condition, verified by a third party, are what let strangers trade five-figure cardboard.
2020s: the digital chapter
Now put all six lessons in one place: numbered sets, fandom-first characters, hard supply limits, first editions, no reprints diluting the run, and provenance built in rather than bolted on. That’s what a digital edition on VeVe is - an officially licensed collectible with a fixed edition size, a mint number, and a public ownership record, displayable in AR instead of a longbox.
Digital collecting didn’t throw out the old rules. It’s the first format designed around them from day one. The set-chasing instinct from 1888, the character love from 1935, the scarcity lesson from 1993, the provenance lesson from 2005 - all of it, minus the acid-free bags.
Same hobby. New chapter. If you want to join it, new collectors get US$10 in free credit to buy their first numbered edition. See what’s dropping this week on the drop calendar, browse the comics hub for landmark issues, or find your character on the characters page. And if you want the anatomy of what makes any collectible a grail - in any era - start here: What makes a grail?