Variety and Value: This early, pre-War, multisport card set featured an unheard of variety of eighteen different sports. Aviation, baseball, basketball, billiards, boxing…and that’s just up to the letter “b”! There’s also dog-sled racing, swimming and more. Most of the cards feature true sports legends. With baseball fans hunting their three cards (Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Carl Hubbell), golfers looking for Babe Didrickson, football collectors looking for big names (Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, Red Grange), and basketball fans looking for some of the only pre-War cards in the hobby, there’s no question that the set remains popular and valuable. The highest graded complete set sold on November 10, 2004 for $360,000 (see article here).
Two-Series and Ambiguous Name: There are 48 cards in the set printed over two series, 1933 and 1934 (but the set is almost always referred to as a 1933 set). It is easy to tell where the series split because of the copyright on the front and back of the card. It’s sometimes known as “1933 Sport Kings” for short or “1933 Sport Kings Gum” because of the red “Sport Kings Gum” banner across the front. You’ll also hear “1933 Goudey Sport Kings” 
because “The Goudey Gum Co.” produced the cards. There are subtle design differences between the two series. Names on the first series are printed in a smaller font. There are also difference in how “Sport Kings Gum” appears on the front. Finally, the sport itself on the reverse is printed in parentheses on the series one cards.
There’s a large picture of the featured athlete with interesting small silhouettes in black ink below the picture and above the name. The biographical information on the back of each card is very intriguing, serving as a snapshot of the particular sport from the 1930’s. The cards are rarely, if ever seen in grades above a PSA 8 because of their poor centering.
The first basketball cards!? This set contains the first basketball cards! (Technically, there are earlier cards highlighting the sport, but this set is the first time that actual players are featured. They certainly predate the 1948 Bowman, that’s for sure. These cards include the #3 Nat Holman and #5 Ed Wachter from 1933 as well as the #32 Joe Lapchick (misspelled Lopchick anywhere it appears on the card) and #33 Eddie Burke from 1934. The Holman and Wachter, being from 1933, are a bit “more first” than the two 1934 cards.
The set was reprinted in 1986, disappointingly so.
Information on Individual Cards:
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