Tales from the Closet Part 5 - German cigarette Soccer cards and others!!!

I lied.  I thought I had gone through all my old German cards, but I missed some actual sports cards.

These cards are mostly soccer cards, but I also have one track and field and one handball.

Information is a little sparse on this issue.  Germancards.com and a British Football (soccer)  blog had a little information on the issue and the company that issued them.

These are German cigarette cards issued by the Richard Greiling Zigarettenfabrikan around 1926-27.  In the 20's and 30s Greiling issued hundreds of cards with various themes.  Lets have a look.

First the Fussball.

The front of the card literally translate to distracting with the inside.

There were suppose to be 14 series in this set.  This is card #10 or literally Picture 10.

This one translates to "Fists with both hands."

Here is my one Handball card I actually had to look up handball, but it's a real sport.

And my one track and field.

And there you go.  Ok I promise this time this is the last of my old German cards.  Next we'll return to some American stuff.

cb out

2013 Topps Basball Series 2 Jumbo Box Break

I haven't bought many cards in the last few months.  Partly to save money and partly because there was really nothing I wanted to open.  But as a set collector and a collector that has tried to put together Topps sets since I started collecting it's hard to pass up opening a jumbo box of Series 2.  Collation has been really good lately and I know that I should get a complete series 2 set out of box, which I did

I won't bore you with pictures of the base design and the continuity inserts, but there are a few new inserts this go around.
First the 3 new inserts.. Making the Mark

Chase it down...

and the Elites

I really like the Elites, even if they look just like the Greats insert from Series 1 and have a lot of the same players in it.  The other two inserts are pretty ho-hum.
On to the "hits"

My dollar relic card

My auto and my manurelic.

I was also lucky enough to get a few extras in the box.  A black parallel..

a camo and a silk....

of Jacob Turner.  

All in all not a bad box. I always enjoy pulling a could extra hits even if they aren't the superstars.  And I did get all the other gold and emerald parallels and all the other inserts and code cards.

Just an FYI I won't be around much this summer, but everything is available for trade, just realize it might take a long while to get a trade done with me right now.

cb out.

Tales from the Closet Part 4 - The rest of my old German cards.

Well now, as promised the last of my German cards.  This won't be the last Tales from the Closet post as I have tons of stuff to post about and probably will use that material for a lot of posts the rest of the year.

I've really saved the best for last as these are really great art cards used for adveritsing and really remind me of the stuff Allen and Ginter was putting out in America with it's non-Baseball issues.

First we have this cool sea scape.  Seebad is a resort town in German.  I couldn't find anything out about this issue but the bottom right corner translates to No 2. Children beach life in 6 pictures.  From what little I could find and from the back of the card F.F Resag was a coffee house in Berlin.

I also have another Resag's card this one featuring natives from Togo.

I remember being told, I'm not sure by who, maybe one of the sellers at the German fleamarket I picked these up at, but I was told that these were used as spoon rests at coffee shops, kind of like a coaster.

Next we have another coffee card.  This one featuring sail boats on the Wannsee, a very large lake in the heart of Berlin. I remember riding ferrys on the lake.

Looks like this one might have been advertising a coffee shop with vending machines.

Next we have a really cool hunting scene. From what I gather Georg Meyer was a Butter salesman or seller

But my absolute favorite I've saved for last.  This card always reminds me of Silence of the Lambs.  It features a Death's Head Moth on the front, that's what Totenkopf means and Apotheke's are drug stores, and like pharmacies over here decades ago they sold all sorts of goodies including coffee and sometimes had soda fountains. And the Oldenburg Apotheke is still in business, they even have a website.

Alright boys and girls that's the end of my really old and cool various German cards.  I'm not sure what I'll have up next.  I really haven't bought any cards in the last couple of months.  I haven't even dabbled in a few packs of Archives or Score football yet.  Series 2 comes out later this week, so I might be picking up my Jumbo box before I leave for my next field trip.  I'll see if I can at least put up the highlights.

cb out.

Tales from the Closet - Part 3: Pfunds Dairy cards.

Well so much for the best laid plans.  I had planned on scheduling some posts, but obviously that didn't happen.  This summer promises to be one of my busiest ever, so I would not expect too many posts out of me these next few months, but I'm going to try and do a few here and there when I get a chance.  

Continuing on with cool stuff I found in my closet at my folks house.  Another group of old German cards.  These are some cool cards issued out of the Pfund Dairy in Dresden, Germany.  From what I could find out on the web, this set was issued for lots of different companies, so it was probably offered from an advertising agency.  I'm not sure how these were distributed or acquired, but from this web site, Heraldry of the World, I found they were issued in 8 series of 6 cards each. However you can see all the cards I have are from Series 12, so I'm not really sure how the issuing went. Or perhaps this is just the 12th series of cards from Pfunds.  This set is called Arm, Flags and Types of Nations.  

Pfunds is still in business.  You can see information here at the Dresden tourist page  or the Pfunds webpage although you'll have to translate it and that's always fun to read.

We can also  do some detective work to figure out a good time frame from these cards.  According to the Heraldry site these were issued some time between 1900 and 1914, but we can narrow it down a little closer.  First lets look at the US's card in the set.

My German is pretty rusty, but the back has a nice little synopsis about the country featured, including the current leader.  On the United States' card Teddy Roosevelt is listed as President.  Teddy was President from 1901 to 1909, so right there we can narrow the issue date to no later than 1909.

On the Mexican card the Porfirio Diaz is listed as President.  Doing a quick google search we learn that Diaz was President of Mexico three times the last time was from 1884 to 1911.  No real help there narrowing down our issue date.  But still fun to look these guys up and learn a little world history.  

Chiles' card will help us a little more.  The president listed is German Riesco.  Riesco was in office from 1901 to 1906, so I think we can now move the issue date of these card to no later than 1906.

Here we have Canada's card.  Canada's card won't help us narrow the date unfortunately, but we do learn who was ruling England at the time and that was King Edward VII who ruled from 1901 to 1910.

Lastly we have Venezuela's card.  Cipriano Castro is listed as the President of the time, but was actually a military dictator.  His reign was from 1899 to 1908.
These are some really cool cards and are the first one's I found at those German flea markets I frequented as a kid when my father was stationed in Berlin in the late 80's and early 90's.  I think it's safe to say these are over 100 years old being most likely issued from 1901 to 1906.

OK I've got one more post planned for the last of my really old and cool German cards.

Thanks for putting up with me.

cb out.