What is "trading card"

n. A collectible card included with tobacco, food or confectionery products and featuring sports, cars, natural history, film characters or other information of interest to purchasers.

n. a card with a picture on it; collected and traded by children

A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other text (attacks, statistics, or trivia). There is a wide variation of different types of cards. Modern cards even go as far as to include swatches of game worn memorabilia, autographs, and even DNA hair samples of their subjects.

Trading cards are traditionally associated with sports; baseball cards are especially well-known. Cards dealing with other subjects like Pokémon are often considered a separate category from sports cards, known as non-sports trading cards. These often feature cartoons, comic book characters, television series and film stills. In the 1990s, cards designed specifically for playing games became popular enough to develop into a distinct category, collectible card games. These tend to use either fantasy subjects or sports as the basis for game play.