Country of Issue: USA
Year of Issue: Early to mid 1920s
Color/B&W: Brown
Number of Cards in Set:
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: Early to mid 1920s Color/B&W: Brown Number of Cards in Set: 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. At the moment, this checklist is a conglomeration of multiple Exhibit card sets that have some similar characteristics. The main characteristics that all these sets share are that they were all issued in the early 1920s and they all have a brown color. There are some characteristics that are easy to differentiate between different sets, and some other characteristics that make it harder to differentiate.
There is another group of cards which I am calling Exhibit Black Early 1920s Movie Stars that could also be grouped with these cards, as they were also issued during the same early 1920s time period. The only reason I'm making a separate checklist for those cards is the color difference, though that group also contains cards from multiple sets.
For some of these groups of cards, it is very difficult to tell whether a card belongs in a particular set or not. For example, there are two groups of cards within the brown group that share almost all characteristics, except some contain a white border and others are borderless. Cards from both groups are often found together, indicating that there is a good probability they were original issued together despite the obvious difference in the border design. Should they be checklisted together or separately? It is very difficult to say with certainty. At this point in time, I'm just lumping them all together to get a checklist going for these cards. If strong evidence comes out about the differentiation of sets within this checklist in the future, I'll split them up appropriately.
Some cards display a name in script in different ways, making it difficult to tell whether a card belongs in a particular group or not.
There are some cards that show a studio marking for Evans, and other cards that show a studio marking for Witzel. It is not clear whether cards showing a particular studio marking belong together in a separate group or whether they should be placed with cards without those markings. It is also not clear whether cards with Evans and Witzel markings should be placed in the same group.
These cards have been around for almost 100 years and I am not aware of any definitive checklist ever being produced for these cards. I think it is better to start a checklist for these cards all lumped together and to have something to work with in the future than to leave them undocumented as they have been for so long.
Cards that do not belong in this group
The cards in this group all were issued before Exhibit began using wild colors with their sets. In the second half of the 1920s, Exhibit used many different colors for their cards, with most cards from that era shown in multiple colors for the same card. They sometimes used brown or black as one of their colors for that era. Though an effort has been made to not show brown and black cards from the second half of the 1920s in this grouping, it is likely that there are a few of these cards shown in the picture checklist, as it is not always easy to tell where they belong when they are seen in brown color and not seen in other different colors.
Cards from this group usually do not contain a greeting, such as Sincerely Yours, or Cordially Yours. Exhibit cards with greetings were generally not issued in this early 1920s era. There are some cards with greetings in the picture checklist, as it is possible there were a few cards issued that way in those years.
Exhibit generally did not start adding "Made in USA" or "Printed in USA" type markings to their cards until 1930 or later. Cards with those markings are generally not included in this picture checklist, though a few could be pictured at the moment.
Date info:
Cards with the design shown above, with the star's name centered at the bottom of the cards in script, with a movie title listed below, show movies from 1919 through 1922, so I'm placing a date of 1922 on these cards.
Cards with the design shown above, with the text in a rectangle, contain references to movies that were issued mostly from 1923 through 1925, so I'm placing a 1925 date on that style of card. This date would hold for either white border or borderless cards.
There are many groups that do not contain reference to a particular movie, so those are more difficult to date.
Thanks to Mike Aronstein for help with this checklist.
Click on the picture at the top of this page to view a picture checklist of this set.
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