Their big size and lack of color has hurt Exhibit cards in collector popularity, but these are some interesting cards and they are generally more available than most early American movie cards.
Exhibit issues are very difficult to checklist because the only way to distinguish between the sets is by very subtle differences. Exhibit cards are almost always blank-backed with very little identifying text on the front. Quite often the only text other than the name of the person on the card is "Made in U.S.A." or "Printed in U.S.A." Sometimes there is more than that, but there is usually not much more.
While extensive work has been done to distinguish between and checklist the different baseball Exhibit sets, little has been done for the movie star cards as far as I can tell. If anyone has any checklists or date information for the various Exhibit movie star sets, I would love to hear from you and hopefully include this information on The Movie Card Website.
Early work that was done to distinguish the baseball card sets from each other revealed that there were subtle differences in the placement and wording of the meager text on the cards from year to year. The same is probably true for the movie star sets.
Here is a chart identifying Exhibit baseball cards by years of issue by the text on the cards. The movie star cards probably follow a similar pattern, especially from 1939 to 1966. This chart was put together by Robert Schulhof for Sports Collectors Digest in 1989. The research for this chart was originally done by Elwood Scharf in writings in the old The Trader Speaks baseball hobby magazine in the 1970s:
|
Year |
No. |
Color |
Text |
|
1921 |
64 |
black |
Player name in script |
|
1922 |
128 |
black |
Team name in caps |
|
1923-24 |
128 |
black |
Position and team in square blocks |
|
1925 |
128 |
black |
'MADE IN U.S.A.' |
|
1926 |
128 |
blue-gray |
'MADE IN U.S.A.' |
|
1927 |
128 |
light green |
Ex. Sup. Co. Chgo Made in USA on right |
|
1928 |
64 |
blue |
Some postcard backs + coupon |
|
1929-30 |
32 |
various |
4 on 1. Two lines block type. No 'Made in USA'. Postcard backs. |
|
1931-32 |
32 |
various |
4 on 1. List of prizes on back. |
|
1933 |
16 |
various |
4 on 1. Blank backs, bright colors. |
|
1934 |
16 |
various |
4 on 1. Subdued colors, white card stock. |
|
1935 |
16 |
slate blue |
4 on 1. Single color only. |
|
1936 |
16 |
olive green |
4 on 1. 'Ptd. IN U.S.A.' |
|
1937 |
16 |
green, blue |
4 on 1. 'Ptd. In USA' |
|
1938 |
16 |
brown |
4 on 1. 'Made IN USA' |
|
1939-45 |
51 |
brown |
Salutation, 'MADE IN USA' |
|
1946 |
32 |
brown-red |
Salutation, 'MADE IN USA' 9/16" |
|
1947 |
32 |
brown-red |
no greeting, hand lettered name, 'MADE IN USA' 1/2" |
|
1948 |
32 |
brown-red |
'MADE IN USA' 5/8" |
|
1949 |
32 |
brown-red |
'AN EXHIBIT CARD' on left |
|
1950 |
25 |
purple, rose |
'MADE IN USA' 7/16" |
|
1951-53 |
33 |
rose, B&W, purple & white, brown |
'Made In U.S.A.' |
|
1954-56 |
30 |
gray-brown-red |
'PRINTED IN U.S.A' Printed script name on left |
|
1957-58 |
64 |
red-brown |
'Printed in U.S.A.' |
|
1959 |
64 |
red-brown |
'Printed in U.S.A.' |
|
1960-61 |
64 |
red-brown, B&W |
'Printed in U.S.A.' 1961 brown |
|
1962 |
32 |
brown |
stat backs |
|
1963 |
32 |
brown |
stat backs. No 'Printed in USA' |
|
1964-66 |
32 |
light brown |
No printed in USA. Blank backs |
Though this chart lumps some years together, I believe there was a new Exhibit baseball card set every year from 1921 through 1966. This chart will be used as the basis for dating the Exhibit movie star cards.
The subtle differences in the text is very important when identifying Exhibit cards, because Exhibit often used the same picture of a star for several years. The only way to tell the difference is by the text.
Exhibit usually issued their sets in multiples of 32. This was probably because their printing and cutting machines were set to work with this number. Their sets usually contain 32 or 64 different cards.
Exhibit held most of the market for these large arcade cards, though they did have some competitors. Mutoscope was probably their biggest competitor, and I will include Mutoscope cards and any other Exhibit-style cards issued by others in the checklists in this section.
I am just starting to put together checklists of Exhibit cards. I know there are collectors that have amassed large numbers of Exhibit cards, and if I can get in touch with some of them, the Exhibit checklists listed here will probably improve very quickly. Until then, I will try to show some examples of the different types of exhibit cards with some beginning checklists, but this section will look a bit sparse, especially considering that there are hundreds, probably thousands of different Exhibit movie star cards out there.
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