Peerless Cloudy (Studio in Print) Set

Issuing Company: Peerless
Country of Issue: USA
Year of Issue: 1947
Color/B&W: B&W
Number of Cards in Set: 50 (unnumbered)
Card Size: 1 1/8" x 2 3/8"
Issued as insert with what product: Came out of coin-operated weight machines

Notes: These cards can be identified by the following characteristics - they are in black and white, there is a star's picture is on a solid clouded area within the photo field. The star's name is in script with the studio name below in print - both are printed diagonally. On the back, these cards contain a fortune on one side, "Collect Engrav-o-tints" or the name of the issuer on the other, and a space for a weight printout in the middle.

Exact year of issue not known. Unlike some of the earlier weight machine cards that displayed the year in the weight printout area, these usually display only the month and day, making it difficult to determine the year of issue. I have seen the back of one of these cards that contained a penned-in date of 1947 in the weight printout, so these cards were probably issued in 1947 or earlier. I have seen other cards with penciled-in dates of 1950, 1952, and 1953, so it appears these cards were in weight scales for many years.

This set was issued near the end of the era of weight scale cards. Large quantities of unused cards from this set have shown up in the marketplace, indicating these cards were overprinted and became unsellable when the weight machines disappeared from drugstores in the mid-1950s.

An interesting group of these cards shows how one woman (probably named Ellen) in the early 1950s used these cards to monitor her weight gain during her pregnancy. She started checking her weight when she was four months pregnant in August of 1952 and bought cards at regular intervals up until the birth of her daughter in February of 1953. She bought a few more cards after her baby daughter (named Karen) was born. She went to the same Ben Franklin store to check her weight and get these cards for this entire time. This group of cards shows how the scale she was using had a broken date indicator for a long period of time. Because she wanted an accurate picture of her pregnancy, she went to the trouble of crossing out the incorrect date and writing in the correct date. She also wrote other notes on the cards in pencil, such as how many months pregnant she was, the time of day she was weighing herself, and other weighings from different scales.

Known issuers:
Generic - Collect Engrav-o-tints - Portraits of Movie Stars
Ben Franklin
W.T. Grant Co.
S. S. Kresge Co.
Liggett's Drug Stores
Lucky Numbers Today
McCrory Stores
G.C. Murphy Co.
J.J. Newberry Co.
J.C. Penney Company
The Rexall Store
Rose's 5-10-25¢ Stores

Thanks to Brian Horne and Shannon Yowell for help with this checklist.

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