Allen & Ginter

Allen & Ginter was a tobacco company based in Richmond, VA. It was founded in 1880. In the late 1880s, the brand began to include baseball cards in their packs, the most popular being the N28 and N29 World's Champions series, which featured pastel drawings of major league ballplayers, as well as other athletes who were the best in their game at the time (1887-1888). A year before this, the company printed sepia-toned cards featuring actual photos of female baseball players to promote their Virginia Brights cigarettes.

Original Logo

The company went defunct in 1890, but in 2006, Topps brought back the Allen & Ginter cards to depict modern ballplayers as well as other modern figures and they have been released annually ever since.