Some  of the earliest prizes found in retail products were Cigarette Cards - trade cards advertising the product - that were inserted into paper packs of cigarettes as stiffeners to protect the contents. A couple years later, lithograph pictures were being printed on the cards that now showed a wide variety of topics from nature to war to sports that appealed to men who smoked.

By 1900, there were thousands of different tobacco card sets manufactured by some 300 different companies.  Some of these sets now featuring Lacrosse Players! Apparently children would stand outside of stores to ask customers who bought cigarettes for the promotional cards.

The CLHoF does have a set, circa 1912, of these tabacco cards  that will be featured in an exhibit in the future but for this virtual exhibit we focus on a much more recent style of promotional cards - a nod from amateur sport organizations to their youth participants in particular.

The first cards up in this collection are courtesy of the BC Lacrosse Association which issued a set of playing cards honouring Western Lacrosse Association greats.

Later, the Vancouver Stealth, of the National Lacrosse League, honoured the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame, and some of our Honured Members, through promotions  at several games during their inaugral season. To mark the occassion of each game the Hall of Fame issued a set of Player Cards for distribution to youth players attending the games.