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.