Presidents.

The President with the highest WAR:

And more Washington, because there's never enough Washington:

Ike's WAR might be higher.

I think you're using the milgraphs version of WAR while I'm using the Military-reference.com version. My favorite Ike card is probably his Red Menace, but I haven't finished that set and don't have his.

Here's the Presidents whose primary career before the Oval Office was the Military. Roosevelt was greatly boosted in his political career by the Rough Riders and their exploits in the Spanish War, and some others served as general officers, but it was not their primary careers nor were they really professional soldiers.

I love this set in all 3 of it's forms, these are from the 1956's in which I only need FDR to finish. I keep hoping Topps will give us cards in this style of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Trump and Biden in one of their Heritage style releases to update the set.

Washington had weaknesses that keep down his WAR.

https://www.washingtoncrossingpark.o...hs-weaknesses/

Interesting piece. I don't disagree, though I think using Trenton as the example is a bad idea as that was an astounding domination victory for Washington. He lost 2 men to exposure and had like 5 casualties while taking out an entire regiment. It is the same core weakness that Lee had, who I know historians love to attack now, but successfully beat the odds time and time again against a much better armed and numerically superior force for two entire years in one of the best fought series of campaigns in history, until his best subordinates were dead. He continued to use more complex tactical movements that his new commanders could not or would not really execute and it cost him Gettysburg and the northern invasion. His gentility and distaste for confrontation kept too many of his weaker replacement commanders in place for too long.

All have strengths and weaknesses, I give Washington points for having the odds heavily stacked against him. Eisenhower would win inevitably almost no matter how he actually performed. He saved many coalition lives by not messing it up and making mostly the right calls at mostly the right times, but with US industrial power and the Soviets doing most of the actual fighting and draining Hitler's resources, it would have been almost impossible to actually lose it. Pershing is in a similar boat but seems to be mostly forgotten now. Grant's reputation as a General is being rehabilitated to suit our contemporary narratives, though he was never really considered bad, just a user of brute force instead of careful tactics to save his mens lives. Winfield Scott probably deserves more consideration than he gets.

But anyways, here's some of the WWII command in one of my favorite cheap common sets, the Look N See's that the 1952 baseball issue lifted the design from. I like low grade, but even I need to upgrade the Truman...

From my reading Lee's strategic decision to invade the North in the first place, and tactics at Gettysburg, do not hold up well to scrutiny. Longstreet knew better, but Lee valued Longstreet much less than he had Stonewall Jackson.

It was the same gamble Washington made; he can't hold them off forever, the other side has almost unlimited resources. His only path to victory was taking Washington, or getting Europe to back them and provide resources.

The narrative of Gettysburg today is largely writ by Longstreet's memoirs, who Lee never criticized for his almost outright insubordination and screwing up the timing of what was supposed to be, in Lee's plan, a multi-pronged action with a lot more than Pickett's division going up alone in a scene of astounding courage and little chance of survival. Longstreet is one of the great generals in American history himself outside of this, there can be a long debate about whether Lee's battle plan was a good idea or not, but Longstreet's disbelief in it (at best, there's a reasoned argument that he straight up ruined it by delaying for hours for seemingly no actual reason) ensured the failure. My personal opinion is that his army of 1862 may well have triumphed over Meade, but his reconstituted 1863 army with a lot of new leaders that were above their talent level as senior staff kept going, was not capable of the precision they had demonstrated before. Lee's 1862 campaigns are some of the best fought in military history, after that it's the impressive northern invasion ending in a wrong decision that lost the only chance the South really had. If he had not done rolled those dice, the South wasn't likely to ever have a better chance at DC or foreign backing than they did then. After Gettysburg it's the long and slow inevitable failure. Lee's generalship is hard to get an honest assessment of these days; the competing traditions of his near-hagiographic reputation after the war and the modern absolute hatred of him as a devil of history because he does not fit our politics of the present.

Washington and Lee both had to really roll the dice. Washington won. Lee lost. Both are among the most interesting of Americans, and hard to penetrate the surviving numerous records they left behind to really 'know'. They had a lot more in common than their familial relations and similar military positions.

I really need a good Longstreet CDV; and some of Washington's excellent commanders don't have very many card options, like Nathaniel Greene. Historic Autographs put out a really cool set entirely dedicated to Washington recently I picked up and really had fun with.

The Civil War News cards are rather sensationalist and not entirely accurate history telling, but some of them look really nice. Here's the two adversaries. I really like Grant's scene here.

I can't remember where I read it, but there's a probably fictionalized exchange between Lee and Longstreet on the evening before the final day of Gettysburg. Lee says to Longstreet, if Meade is still there (meaning his position on the high ground) in the morning, I shall attack him. Longstreet replies, if Meade is still there in the morning, it's because he wants to be. Then Longstreet tries to persuade Lee to withdraw and retreat, but Lee refuses -- perhaps believing Jackson, had he lived, would have urged an attack.

I never did read Douglas Southall Freeman, it just seemed too long.

At least one account I have read suggests Lee did not fully appreciate what was happening in the battle, when Pickett was driven back Lee allegedly said to him, General, rally your diviision, to which Pickett replied, General, I have no division.

Both those scenes are from The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, and subsequently the Gettysburg film version of it. Shaara’s novel is heavily based on Longstreet’s memoirs. I really like the book and the epic movie. His son expanded into a career of similar novels, most of which are very well done too.

Freeman’s 4 volume biography of Lee is definitely hagiographic, though Freeman was an excellent historian and his sourcing and documentation is good. He includes too many anecdotes running in old Virginian families, though he does always cites the source and notes several times that anecdotes are not really verifiable. His bias is very much in favor of Lee and of Washington (who he also wrote a big biography on) and he does a good job debunking several myths. It is by far the best Lee biography out there even with the unfortunate hagiography; I’ve yet to find one without a heavy bias one way or the other and Freeman’s detail is unmatched by anyone else. It’s hard to find these days in its original form, I believe it’s been several decades since it was reprinted unabridged. I had to pay $75 for my set.

Lee’s Lieutenants, the 3 volume follow up on the commanders of the Army of Northern Virginia is the better work and, in my personal opinion, a masterpiece of historical writing. It’s much less hagiographic as it isn’t about Lee himself, and his weighing of the weaknesses and strengths of division and corps commanders as the war goes on is the best work of its kind still and always fair. Longstreet and Jackson shine when the facts support that and come for heavy criticism when the facts support that. A classic on leadership in general, and military history, if one has the patience to read the behemoth. It too is now published as a one volume abridgment but the uncut version was published through at least the 1980’s and is easy to find.

EDIT: some of the reprintings and the abridgments remove the footnotes that contain a ton of information on his sourcing. A lot of the contemporary academic attacks on Freeman evidently did not have the uncut originals or chose to ignore them.

EDIT 2: sorry for hijacking off cards :D

Well, Freeman was a Virginian and if I recall his father was in Lee's army, so I guess if he was biased towards Lee it's understandable. I grew up in Northern Virginia in the 60s and a lot of stuff was named for Lee, not sure how much of it the woke movement has now changed.

He talks about his Virginian roots in the Introduction off the bat, but you can tell even without him saying it lol. I tend to agree with the 20th century thought that you cannot fully remove yourself from what you are looking at, but I also agree with the 19th century German theory that objectivity should always be the goal. I wish the 5% that's hagiography had been cut out, but I really wish other historians dived into their subjects with the same passion and depth he did. Producing a 4 volume history work and a 3 volume supplemental followup is unthinkable now to a mainstream publisher.

I don't want to get to far into wokeism before people go nuts and this turns into an outrage thread, but I will never understand how Lee and Jackson are held as the symbols of things they had little involvement in and mixed records with for so many of my fellow citizens today. I am simultaneously against the hagiography. It's a shame we can't stick to facts for events within the last ~150 years.

And back to cards, I like the Chrome parallels of the Heritage series, especially the founders:

When San Francisco renamed a school named for Abraham Lincoln because of his involvement in the Black Hawk War, I got off the fence and decided all this symbolic stuff really wasn't helpful to solving the very serious issues out there. The Confederate flag, OK I get that.

It's hard to know how to view Lee IMO. On the one hand, it's easy -- he was a traitor to his country; rather than serving it he led an army against it and worse fought to uphold slavery. On the other hand, there has always been this romantic notion of the tormented warrior reluctantly siding with his beloved Virginia, and doubtless too the Civil War was far more complex than free vs. slave states and the South's grievances were not necessarily all illegitimate.

At the risk of getting into !@#$% with the ideologues....

Lee wasn't exactly the proponent of slavery he is cast as today. He said he would eliminate it if he could and prevent the war. Little survives of his own ownership as a young man, the Lee's were prominent as a military family but not a wealthy one. It seems he owned a few he had no use for, as a military man, from an inheritance. What actually happened to them does not seem to survive in the record, as I recall. They must have been rented out for some time but that they just disappear later would suggest they eventually were either freed or sold. The slaves at Arlington were owned by his father in law, not him or his wife (often said today to be his wife's). He left his army headquarters in the 1862-1863 winter partially to file the paperwork to free his father-in-laws slaves pursuant to his will as the executor.

There is certainly a criticism of Lee here. But that criticism is that he was not a man ahead of his time. Lee was never a boat rocker in his social world. From today's view, he should have been. He was certainly racist, no moreso than men of his class and time in Virginia, but also not much less so, maybe a little. Lee was not a proponent of the institution he is now seen as the symbol of by the left, and had minimal involvement with it. It seems to have not been an issue he kept in mind much at all.

My personal opinion is that the traitor tag doesn't mean much for revolutionaries. Washington betrayed his country too by the exact same standard. He picked his state over the feds, after Lincoln raised an army to invade his homeland, just as Washington picked the colonies he lived in instead of the greater State ruling them. A fellow is a patriot when we judge his revolution right, a traitor when we judge his revolution wrong. A revolutionary is by definition a traitor. Lee himself saw it as defensive, he didn't want to do it but he could not join an invasion of his home and so did the obvious. I think most in that situation would, really. If the other states raised an army to invade my state, I don't see how I would join them even though I despise my state's corrupt government and radicalism. My friends and family are still here, it is my homeland. I have a hard time holding a man wrong for this choice. I find it easy to despise, say, the South Carolina planters for whom the slavery issue was the driver, but the North's tariff punishment of the South pushing them to leave surely bears some responsibility too. The South left, and aimed to go peacefully, but the North chose to make it a war of conquest. Raising 100,000 men to invade others, no matter how just the ones raising that army see it, will make the people who live in that place tend to prefer to fight against them rather than for. This seems to me natural more than an issue for political narratives.

History as political narrative of the now is popular everywhere, and usually total bunk, oft absurd, always misused. People of the past did bad things by our standards, we can still look at what happened and why, we can look at how values have changed and ask if they are good (in the particular example of slavery, the answer here is obvious, but am I speaking of a greater context of all history), we can look at the virtues and we can admire Lee's gentlemanly virtue, Grant's grace and honor in victory, Cato's dedication to the republic, Washington's military brilliance, Franklin's wit and practical intellect, Aristotle's genius; slave owners all who we can criticize for their acceptance or even advocacy of a thing we see as wrong and unnatural (which I agree with; I just don't see my moral views as eternal truth).

As has been said, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

The whole thing was so aptly summed up in the exchange between Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun back I think in the 1830s, and I think this one actually happened.

Jackson, at a dinner, but directly addressing himself to Calhoun: Our federal union. It must be preserved.

Calhoun: The union, next to our liberty, the most dear.

And now we are removing Calhoun's name from dorms.

I had a teacher way back in the day who was young then but became a well=known Civil War scholar. His theory was that it was what he called a preemptive counterrevolution by the South.

I have no idea if it's true but I've seen that anecdote. If it isn't true, it still perfectly encapsulates the two men and what would become the great conflict of American history.

I love history and there are many complicated things in it, but I think the origin of the War is made a lot more complicated today than it really was. It's all there, all documented in detail by the people who chose and fought it. Each state defined what it was doing and why, and the individuals have left millions of pages of documentation. Some of the deep South put slavery right in their declarations of secession; the southern romantic notion that it was a side issue is as false as todays coastal elite narrative that it was just a bunch of evil racists who wanted only to be racist and deserved to be annihilated by the federal state. Even the North didn't decide until 1863, half way in, that their position going forward was that the war was largely about ending slavery.

In a time where the federal state was seen as a loose collection of independent states, and that federal state is becoming dominated by one block of states and used as an economic weapon against the other block of states, it isn't hard to see why people might want to pull out of that confederation. Slavery is one part of that, the biggest part of that for certain states whose economies were especially reliant on it like South Carolina, but not for other states like Virginia. Virginia's leading reason was that they would not invade their brother states, and thus joined the defense. It is easy to see why the side dominating the confederation wouldn't want the others to be permitted to leave. Lee's choice is exceptional in that he was offered the command of the North or the command of his state (not the Confederacy, just Virginia), but his choice was faced by thousands. I disagree with many modern views, but I think I will never understand why people expect a man to be willing to invade his own home. Some might and some did, but I cannot see why it would be expected. I could never do it. I doubt most advocating it today and condemning Lee's choice would. I have a hard time imagining California and New York elites joining in invading their home states if the federal government said to do it...

And here's some more history cards, from the strange dandies set. Alcibiades is one of those figures of history that it is sometimes difficult to believe was even a real man. I love the Caesar image.

I always liked Goethe's line about Bonaparte that serves as the epigram to Emil Ludwig's book. "Napoleon went forth to seek Virtue, but, since she was not to be found, he got Power".

For several reasons -

1. Athletes have well-defined rookie seasons, and in general, the people pictured on non-sports cards do not. (When was Neil Armstrong's rookie year -- 1969, when he landed on the moon? 1966, when he flew his Gemini mission? In 1955, when he became a test pilot? 1949, when he joined the Navy?)

2. While sports cards have rookie cards defined separately from first cards (usually based on the differences between playing in major and minor leagues), the distinction is lost in non-sports cards.

3. In sports, a rookie card generally means a card issued in association with a player's rookie season, but not in non-sports (else John Milton's "rookie card" would be well over 300 years old). Michael Jackson first sang professionally in 1964 (as part of the Jackson 5), and as a solo in 1971. His first foreign card seems to have been in 1971 (as part of the J5), his first solo card was 1972 (also foreign), and his first US, solo card would have been from his 1984 Topps set. Which of these most corresponds to what is accepted as a sports rookie card? I'd say the 1984 Topps, but it's either 20 or 13 years too late to be a "rookie" card.

4. To people who've collected non-sports for a long time, the whole idea of a non-sports rookie card appears to be an attempt by sports card speculators to identify and hype non-sport cards as being more valuable than they otherwise would be, given that their intrinsic scarcity and value isn't any greater than any other card from the same set.

5. And often, people who identify a particular card as a non-sports celebrity's "rookie" card are simply ignorant and wrong when they do so (and I'm not accusing anyone in this thread, btw) -- I recently informed someone who was calling an Impel Terminator 2 card Arnold Schwarzenegger's rookie card that they were a year late -- he had appeared in the previous year on cards in Pacific's Totall Recall set.

Anyone who says a particular card is a celebrity's first card is making a statement of fact. Calling it a "rookie" card, though, is just putting a label on the card that it usually doesn't deserve, with the connotation that it has a value associated with it that the market may or may not bear out.

This is exactly what it was in sports too; a speculative hype train started by those who stood to profit if people bought in on the sales pitch, and here we are with everyone on that train and chugging full steam ahead. I've never really 'understood' the rookie craze, but when one of my Discord groups is busy hyping a Trout rookie, it somehow seems less strange to me than when they're trying to hype Boba Fett's rookie card. Athletes, non-sports, I understand 'first card' appeal (which is different from rookie, with the loose and usually inconsistent rookie rules that seem to exist almost solely to exclude any card that isn't easy to get because it would be difficult to profit as easily on). First card makes sense to me. I don't get first card appeal for fictional characters in non-sports land. I get wanting the first card of a favored baseball player (which is rarely their "rookie" that is hyped for $$$$) or an actor or a historical figure (Good luck there identifying anonymous CDV's...) one admires or collects.

Eeh, maybe not so much when "rookie" cards first became a thing in sports cards. At that time, there was Topps. And that's it. There was no problem identifying Pete Rose's 1963 card as his rookie card, as there were no other cards that it could possibly be. There were no chase subsets, no parallels, nothing else to speak of. You simply identified the first card that a player appeared on, and 90%+ of the time, it was by default the rookie card.

All the hyping of one card over another came later, in the 1980s, as the number of cards proliferated.

In 1963 no one gave a darn about rookies at all and they weren’t special. The rookie as a special item is an invention of the early 80’s dealers. Since we are talking about collecting rookies specifically, not that they existed (of course players have had first cards or what we calla rookie now for the entirety of card history), that is the context used. There was not only Topps, many, even if most significant post war players first cards are absolutely not Topps; it’s just the Topps card that is branded the rookie.

Although I used a 1963 Rose as an example, the period I was thinking of was ca. 1979. I worked at a comic shop in Nashville then, and we sold baseball cards as well. That was the time when we first started seeing reference to "rookie" cards in the press (as it was), in guides, and started to mark such cards as "rookies" on stickers. This period - the late 1970s, when it was a Topps-only world, and before Donruss and Fleer came along -- was when rookie cards became the hypable thing they are today.

Okay. We'll move it from 1981 to 1979. Doesn't change anything. Topps was NOT the only game in town. They were the only huge manufacturer with an annual MLB wide release, but a ton of the 1956-1980 players have first cards outside of the Topps orbit. They appear in regional issues, in team issues, in a host of other sets that you will find in the standard catalog. I don't think there is anything to debate here...

Some more authors of 4 completely different literary types.

David is probably the leading collector of and expert on music cards in the world. He has moved towards adopting the term. Rookie card, first card, all the same to me.


https://imageevent.com/halpen/rockro...rww8caa1y1.cow

If only someone would do this for movie cards.

This is, I think without doing any research or critical thinking, the Topps Rookie Card of one of the most significant people in human history, a man whose impact on human development is difficult to overstate. It costs a tiny fraction of the rookie card of whoever is currently tearing up A ball and has collectors 'literally shaking' when they pull his paper base Bowman.

Speaking of rookie cards, here is the first card -- a 1954 British issue I looked for for years -- of the wondrous Julie Andrews.

I'm pretty sure this here is another significant rookie card. After all, Jesus is portrayed as just a baby!

I'm open to offers, no lowballs, I know what I have. If Mickey is 10 Mill, the Christ is at least 20 mil.

It was on the sixth day that God created man in his own image. But it was Sam Colt that made men equal, with the six shooter.

Colt was an innovator in more than just firearms, in many ways he laid a template for business and marketing, with celebrity endorsements, product placement, fanciful marketing campaigns and the use of an assembly line with interchangeable parts. The libraries and educational programs he created in his facilities led to a generation of mechanical engineers and machinists largely coming from Colt before entering and reshaping other mechanical industries and products.

The Chairman has a shared card from 1945 but 1947 as far as I know is the year of his first solo cards. Just in.

Umberto I, King of Italy for over 2 decades. The man endured an absurd number of anarchist assassination attempts, one of which he fended off with his saber. They finally got him in 1900.

The OG's of Sci-Fi.

Mary Shelley was writing SF before either of these guys were born.

https://www.tcdb.com/Images/Cards/Ba...8177-158Fr.jpg

One of my professors used to argue that the first science fiction was Plato's Timaeus. I didn't buy the thesis but he had a fair argument for it.

"Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?"

"Yes."

"Morons!"

Classic movie!

Here's another 19th century Ginter author. The early years of Ginter included a fair number of writers I like and picked up.

A late cabinet card of Melville Weston Fuller, the eighth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1888 until his death in 1910. There was damage to his face and his shoulder that was touched up at some time, and done fairly well.

I really enjoy little bits of history like that, very cool. That mustache is next level!

Here is my historic pickup, the GOAT. His biggest accomplishment, aside from establishing the presidency, was leaving it, setting the precedence for a lasting democracy.

It's not everyday you get to pickup a 19th century card of your hometown. Also snagged another Washington!

Teddy Roosevelt, postmarked during his presidency

The Kinney Leaders are a great set.


Here is a CDV of Eduard Falckenstein, who spent 60 years in the Prussian and German armies, beginning as an enlisted rifleman and rose to the top, playing a part, often significant, in almost all of the German wars. Another benefit of CDV's is one can get cheap contemporary cards of some people who were historical figures in that time, but have few other card options.


Also, an unrelated request. Anyone have a card of Shaka, king of the Zulus? I've never seen one but would like to add him to my history collection.

Here is one:

https://www.comc.com/Cards/Non-Sport...rrior/10632438

I was thinking one that maybe looked like him ;), but this is one interesting card here. Someone bought it for $1.04.

Captain John Smith, soldier, geographer, governor, author, and more, who named New England.

JFK "rookie" grail
 

While next to worthless in all likelihood, this is a grail for me, almost certainly the first card (it's actually a sticker) of JFK, 1961 Chocolates Simon from Spain. One rarely sees the 1961 issue and more commonly sees the 1964 (think Cassius Clay).

Nice picture too. Is their a list somewhere of the earliest cards for each President?

Not that I know of.

Trading Card Database is a pretty good resource, but they don't list most foreign issues, and there are many obscure foreign issues.

"This isn't a 'commie'... Nothing funny about Teddy" - 1907. Postcards can be fun with the historically interesting or amusing writing.

Great resource. I don't collect rookies, but its interesting to see how early major historical figures got a card. I'd imagine most of the Presidents rookies pre-date their campaigns. I also imagine before going through the TCDB that I own exactly 0 presidential rookies :D

Cards I need but don’t know if any exist

Claude Monet, Richard Feynman, Audie Murphy

Here is the only Monet I know. I've seen an Audie Murphy in a Dutch Gum issue. I think he's in Nu Cards Western too. Check the Trading Card Database.

Audie Murphy has a lot, including a bunch of Dutch cards, a 1956 Adventure card that should be cheap, and some modern stuff like the 1992 Starline Americana and Historic Autographs WWII set.

William Howard Taft, 1909.

Love all the presidential stuff!

This arrived today. Garfield is a fascinating political figure. I highly recommend the audiobook/book Destiny of the Republic.

The same author wrote a really interesting book on Theodore Roosevelt's exploration of the Amazon, River of Doubt, if you haven't read it by chance.

I have not, thanks! I'll check it out.

Maybe in the category of lesser known historical figures...

How about Frank Hart, "The first black athlete depicted on a sports card, trading card or tobacco card" (Wikipedia entry)

Hart's card from 1880 in an SGC 2, sold for $5,276 in March.

See: https://youtu.be/Z_pql3vdoqI?t=64

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1668403817

PSA has 1 graded (a PSA 2)
SGC has 4 graded (highest is an SGC 2)

I collect Leo Tolstoy specifically and have bought a lot of postcards from around the end of his life from Eastern Europe over the years. Here's 4 of my favorites.

1950s issue of Sir Edmund..

It says "This isn't a comic' not commie.

COMC has a couple dozen Audie Murphy cards indexed, some for sale.

https://www.comc.com/Cards,so,vList,=Audie+Murphy,oo

Here are 2 cards of Richard Feynman indexed on COMC:

https://www.comc.com/Cards,so,vList,=Richard+Feynman,oo

The Kaiser.

Heavy lies the bicorne.

Victoria Louise, Prussian Princess. I think her biggest claim to fame is that her wedding was the last big gathering of the European royals before World War I broke out and the extended family was just never the same again. This is her at, I believe, 17 in 1909, as the honorary colonel of the II Life Hussars. This card hit my primary points for collecting historical images; it has 1) a cool horse and 2) a cool military hat.

Got a good size order back from PSA with some fun non sport….(sorry the pics are upside down but you get the point)

Also "The Kaiser".


Sorry, couldn't resist. :D

Ha, yours is a lot better than mine!

**trigger warning**

Historical figures. Great is up to you.

Some group (or person) operating under the name "Fascinating Cards" has put out a couple nonpartisan sets of Congress cards now. I unironically love this; we don't get many history cards and while I'd rather have the Continental Congress, I'll settle for anything of historical significance. I'm not sure it will last, as the people who care enough about government, politics or history to collect Congress cards are the type of people who will mostly be upset over one half of the cards or the other. I ended up getting a whole case for very little and cracked the first box. Maybe the next one will have an AOC Yard Sign Relic or a Lauren Boebert Chrome RC!

The freshmen members elected in 2020 have a "Rookie Card" at top, which I find amusing for some reason. Stock is slightly thin, but quality is surprisingly decent.

There is a 1975 style card from a few years back with all of the "Squad" on it. Awesome thing, honestly.

Well, perhaps she isn't quite a historical figure, but I've been looking for this her likely first card for so long that I am going to post it.

Have you seen any of the "Politicards" playing card sets through the years? I used to pick up the 1971 set when I saw it, when I was going through my oddball non-sports phase years ago.

Not really flattering to any of the subjects in it, but pretty interesting. There's even a Norman Mailer card in it (Joker), I wonder if it's his first card.

They can be had on Ebay pretty cheap.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/15509022991...Bk9SR8SPg4SdYQ

I’ve got a couple of the sets, 71, 96, and I think 2008. I prefer realistic portrayals of people, but they’re pretty fun and cheap sets to fill in gaps. There is lots of presidential sets but outside the Oval Office, not a whole ton even for non-obscure and long-serving historically significant officials. Good fun to flesh out my history boxes with some of the oddballs and unusuals

If anyone has the Claude Monet card and is willing to move it, please DM me