Country of Issue: USA
Year of Issue: 1930
Color/B&W: One color
Number of Cards in Set: 32 (unnumbered)
Card Size: 3 3/8" x 5 3/8"
Issued as insert with what product: Came out of coin-operated arcade machines
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Issuing Company: Exhibit Supply Company Country of Issue: USA Year of Issue: 1930 Color/B&W: One color Number of Cards in Set: 32 (unnumbered) Card Size: 3 3/8" x 5 3/8" Issued as insert with what product: Came out of coin-operated arcade machines |
Notes: Checklist Incomplete. The movie stars are not identified on the cards. The back writeup indicates there are 32 cards in the set. The coupon on the card was meant to be cut out, leaving the card in a damaged state. Coupons could be turned in for prizes, and the prizes are listed in the writeup.
There was a contest associated with this set. Contestants were given a contest sheet from Exhibit, then weresupposed to cut the small pictures out of the fans cards and paste them onto the contest sheet and mail itin to Exhibit.
Between the coupon cutouts and the mail-in contest, it is a miracle that any of these cards still exist today.And I don't think that too many of these cards do exist, they seem to be very hard to find.
These cards can be identified by the following characteristics:
- Each card shows a fan with four different movie stars pictured within the fan.
- They have one color (the same card can be found in multiple colors)
- Backs contain a detailed writeup about the fans card promotion, including prizes that can be won.
- Coupon on lower corner of card.
- 1930 date on front.
The contest on the back says that the cards feature movie stars. I once spent a great deal of time trying to identify the movie stars on the cards. I formulated a hypothesis that each of the pictures on the fans cardswould probably match an earlier Exhibit card that had been issued with another Exhibit set. This turned outto be true, though there are still some pictures that I have not matched with Exhibit cards, so it hasn't beenproven 100% true yet, though I think the remaining pictures will eventually turn up a match with Exhibit cards.
When I was looking for matching Exhibit cards for the pictures on the Fans cards, I found a lot of matches quickly, but then I hit a wall. When I hit the wall, there were still probably 50 or more that I couldn’t find. I thought that was a bit suspicious. I expected to have trouble at some point, but I thought I would be able to find a lot more than that. Another thing I found suspicious was that some of the unidentified pictures were a bit unusual, such as a card with a back view of a man and a bunch of other pictures of people in silly poses.
While looking through the Exhibit cards in the Jefferson Burdick collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, I noticed that Burdick had three comic Exhibit cards that matched pictures on the Fans cards. I reread the Exhibit contest rules. There was an Exhibit Movie Star Fan Test Sheet. I’ve never seen one of those, but I recalculated what it must look like. I think now that the Exhibit Movie Star Fan Test Sheet did not have a place for all 128 pictures. Instead, it probably just had places for about half that many movie stars, with their names identified beneath the blank rectangles. The trick of the contest was picking out the movie stars, and not using one of the comic pictures, since about half the pictures were not really movie stars.
When I was looking for identifications, I was stuck about halfway through, until I saw an ebay auction for those Exhibit comic cards, which must be pretty hard to find. The seller had a big group of them, not a complete set, but most of a set. Almost all of the cards matched the Exhibit Fans pictures I was missing.
So, in summary, the pictures on the Exhibit Fans cards are a mixture of movie stars and pictures from a comicExhibit card set. The pictures used for the Fans set all came from other Exhibit sets that had been issued duringthe previous few years, mostly from 1928 and 1929. Exhibit issued a lot of movie star sets during the 1920s, andI think they probably came out with a new set every month or two for a long period of time. These sets were notsold for very long before the next set was issued. As a result, there are now a large number of different Exhibitmovie star cards, and cards from those sets are still readily available at reasonable prices, but it is verydifficult to find all of the cards or all of the sets, since they came and went so fast when issued.
Please click the image at the top of this page to view a visual checklist of this set.
At this time, my checklist shows images of 27 of the 32 Fans cards. If anyone has images of any of the other five Exhibit Fans cards, please email them along to me. Identifications for most of the cards have been provided in the checklist, but there are still some missing. If you can find the missing Exhibit cards that match the pictures, please send those along to help complete the identifications.
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