Best Credit Card is a Myth

Professor Cardworthy relates how 40 years ago he lived in the quaint Pennsylvania town of Mercersburg with a population of about 1,500, but really there were only around 800 people in the actual town. There were a few stores including John’s Butcher Shop, which was the only grocery store with a very limited inventory. If you needed a box of cereal, the only choice in town was Wheaties or Corn Flakes. 

The town had a fast food joint called Tastee Freez, which was also a popular hangout for teenagers. The Tastee Freez specialities were burgers and shakes. If you ordered the Big T burger the choice was: with cheese or without cheese. Shakes were just as simple with two choices: chocolate or vanilla. Double burgers and strawberry shakes were apparently not invented till years later.

By the way, John’s Butcher Shop would let you pick up items during the week and pay your bill on Friday, when most residents were paid. Furthermore, John did not add interest to the bill and he had a 0% delinquency rate, since word of a “deadbeat” would spread quickly.

Those days of the late 1970s have long faded. 

Life was Simple

Same with credit cards. The choice was Visa or Mastercard and Classic or Gold, usually a $20 annual fee for the Classic or $40 for the Gold, offering a minimum credit line of $5,000.

Compared to today those few credit card choices from the mid-1980s mushroomed to tens of thousands of variations, perhaps far more than 30,000. The combinations are far more endless than customizing a hoagie or a sub.

In 1986, there were only 310 million credit cards in the entire world carrying the Visa, Mastercard, or American Express brands. (Visa 150 million; Mastercard 135 million; American Express 25 million)

In 2020 in the U.S. alone, Visa has 335 million credit cards, Mastercard 243 million; American Express 55 million; and Discover 60 million or a total of 698 million credit cards.

Clearly this is why there is and never has been the “ten best credit cards” or the “ten perfect credit cards.” If you google “perfect credit card” you’ll get 630 million links or results and searching “best credit card” produces 4.4 billion results. Incidentally, the highest ranked credit card sites are paid listings generally offering some good advice while featuring cards from issuers who pay them, usually the largest issuers.

How Can You Find the Right Card for You? . . . .