Wednesday, October 23, 2013

1890 N224 Kinney Cigarette Military Uniforms


I'm a sucker for vintage stuff like this. These are N224 Cigarette cards put out circa 1890 by Kinney Tobacco of New York. I read someplace that there are over 600 in the set. They come in two varieties, with a white-ish background and the colored backgrounds as these are.

These came to me for a song, and given the condition, that's probably a fair price. But I really don't care much about condition on items like this. Mint condition is cool and all but those plastic slabbed cards probably went straight from a smoker's pack to a box while these babies were probably begged from an uncle by a kid who lined them up, read the description, maybe traded some with friends. They were loved and appreciated by someone.


These are about the same size as American tobacco cards such as the T206 set. I'm partial to the two I have that portray uniforms of the Maryland State Militia and National Guard.




I'm posting this one oversized to show how nice it is and so you can read the printing.


My examples have two different backs. This is the descriptive back I guess you could call it. 


This is a checklist back. Looks like they issued these in 'collections' of fifty cards. Hard to make out the title line on this one but blown up it shows to be 'Collection No. 8'.



1 comment:

  1. Impressive collection!
    I always think how could they even move with all those heavy and tight clothes on more so battle!?

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