GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT MOVIE STAR BISCUIT CARDS

Biscuit cards are an interesting subset of movie star trading cards. These cards were issued in England and in various European countries from about the late 1920s through the 1950s. They are usually small cards made of stiff cardboard with a glossy surface. Many of these issues tend to curl a bit from top to bottom. Most of these issues are blank-backed, with little or no information about who issued them printed on the cards. Many of these sets are numbered, though some are unnumbered. Some of these sets feature color cards, some black and white.

The leading issuers of biscuit (cookie) cards were De Beukelaer and Bridgewater. They each issued many sets of movie star cards. De Beukelaer issued one continuously numbered set over many years that reached number 1100. The De Beukelaer and Bridgewater sets are fairly well documented, though there are some things about these sets that are a bit sketchy, such as color/b&w variations in some of the sets.

There were a number of biscuit sets issued in Europe, mostly in the 1930s, that are in great need of better documentation. Some of these sets may have come from De Beukelaer and Bridgewater, while others were issued by other companies. Because of the similarity in design of all of these cards, there is a good chance that they were printed by one company and then shipped out to different card issuers to insert in their products.

It is very likely that these cards contain blank backs to make them easier to issue them in countries with different languages. Biscuit cards were issued in countries such as England, France, Belgium, Germany, and probably other European countries as well.

Identifying the many biscuit-style movie star card sets poses a big problem, since there are very few, if any, identifying marks on the cards to distinguish the different sets from one another. For many of the sets, the main distinguishing marks on the cards are the card numbers and the style of text used for the star's name.

Since the Bridgewater and De Beukelaer biscuit cards have been so well documented and there are so many sets that can be positively identified as being issued by them, I've given each of those companies a separate checklist section on The Movie Card Website. I am listing all other biscuit card sets in this section. I am including the Greetings cards in these checklists because they are similar in appearance to the biscuit cards, even though they were probably not issued with biscuits.

The checklists presented in this section are an attempt to bring some order to the biscuit card sets. Since identifications are so difficult for these sets, I am going to try to picture as many cards as possible for these checklists. Hopefully with time these checklists will take better shape and become complete, so collectors will know what is out there.

Movie Star Biscuit Cards Sales List
Movie Star Biscuit Cards Checklists | Movie Card Website Front Page