American Soccer Cards of the 1970s

A rare bit of history

American Soccer Cards of the 1970s

When I was in elementary school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was fascinated with baseball cards.

These were heady times. The baseball card industry took off in the 1970s when certain high volume collectors started buying up any and every card they could find on the secondary market. The industry hit its height sometime around 1989 or 1990, when people foolishly thought that their rookie cards might someday finance their children’s college education.

I wasn’t impervious from the financial aspects — I had a price guide like everybody else — but the truth is that I also really liked the cards themselves.

However, I don’t remember seeing many soccer cards. I do know there was a set for the short lived Major Soccer League around 1990, since I recognize these cards and am pretty sure I had a pack at one point in time. The truth, though, is that most card collectors in America didn’t care much for soccer cards.

But that doesn’t mean that the companies didn’t try.

If you browse through The Trading Card Database’s soccer section, you’ll come across a number of interesting NASL related releases in the United States in the 1970s. Topps was the dominant force in baseball in those days (and apparently also issued full sets in England, such as in 1975-76), but there were also a number of interesting local sets released in certain U.S. cities.

The first nationwide major set in the United States, however, seems to be 1979 Topps:

Unfortunately, it thinks that NASL Marketing Inc didn’t bother to create cards for individual players. From what I can tell, the set contains only logos:

It also seems that these were stickers, as evidenced by this eBay listing for unopened packs:

As you can tell by the price, this isn’t exactly a set in high demand.

It seems that the back of the cards could also be combined to form player pictures, though I haven’t seen any further descriptions of this.

It doesn’t seem that there was a single nationwide NASL set after this Topps issue. I’m not sure if the league figured there was no demand or what exactly happened. I do know, though, that it is not easy to get kids interested in your sport’s superstars if they don’t have posters or cards or magazines to help with familiarity.