1945 Esquire article on "The Era of the Cigarette Card"

[trdcrdkid]

In the December 1945 issue of Esquire, there was an article by Karl Baarslag called "The Era of the Cigarette Card". It was six pages long with three pages of color photos, with numerous T and N cards (including a T206 Matty black cap) pinned to a corkboard. I've posted these color photos below as they appeared in George Vrechek's Sports Collector's Digest article about Baarslag's article, now on the Old Cardboard site at http://www.oldbaseball.com/refs/Esquire_Magazine.pdf. The complete text of the article was reprinted in the October 1977 The Trader Speaks, and I've posted that below the pictures.

The article presents a history of tobacco cards in both the US and the UK, in sometimes over-the-top language, but Baarslag was under the impression that the millions of tobacco cards distributed in the US had almost entirely disappeared. He got this impression because there were "less than 200 known collectors" in the US, and "there are no dealers or large stocks of these cards". He mentions J. R. Burdick (who he quotes) and Charles Bray, and queries "the chief librarian of one of our greatest Eastern libraries" in a vain search for tobacco cards. He ends by asking "Is there still a sizable supply of these souvenirs of a fogotten and bygone America stored away in attics or basements, together with other boyhood treasures, or have they all been swept into virtual extinction by the busy house-cleaning brooms of unsentimental American housewives, and the great American habit of throwing out with the rubbish everything for which we cannot find a day-to-day use?"

[Leon]

A very good account of tobacco cards and a mention of an Englishman who had a reference book (EW Tigar?)......