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

Tales from the Closet - Part Two - Really old cards!!

First off sorry for not posting for so long.  The weather up here in Alaska finally broke and it's been really nice, so that means I have lots of stuff to do outside and with the daylight lasting almost to midnight.. well when I get done I really don't feel like sitting down to post.  Not only that, but my field season starts next week so my posting will be even more sporadic.  I'm hoping to find some time to schedule a few posts so I have a little content coming out, but after over three years this is pretty much just part of my yearly cycle.

OK now on to the second post of some of the stuff I pulled out of the closet at my parents house.

I grew up a military brat so I moved around a lot. My fathers last post was in Berlin, Germany just after the wall fell and we were there from 1989 to 1992.  It was a great time in my life. I was 16 when I got there and  18 when I left.  But while there I use to visit a lot of the local flea markets.  Berlin is a very old city and there were some great stuff you could pick up for cheap.  One of the things I started buying was old coffee and chocolate cards.  Similar to cigarette cards of the period they are beautiful with a wide range of subjects.  To be honest it's only now that I have them in my hands again that I've finally got to do some research on what I really have.  My only regret was not picking more of them up at the time.

First batch I'm going to start off with are these old Stollwerck Chocolade cards.  After doing a little research I found a website that had a list of various types of German cards.  You can check it out here.  The Stollwerck company is still in business and still makes chocolate.  Stollwerck issued lots of different sets of cards with it's products from the mid 1880's to the early 1930s.

This group was part of an Album, album #3 and was issued in 1899.  Sets were issued in groups of 6.  I only have 5.  This set is called Aus der Berliner Siegesalle or The Avenue of Victory in Berlin. The Siegesalle and the statues use to reside in front on the original Reichstag building pre World War II.

While not the most beautiful of the Stollwerck cards they are full of history, especially if you read German.

Next up some really cool Dairy cards!!

Tales from the Closet - Part 1: Hidden Autos!

When I moved up to Alaska 15 years ago, I really didn't know what I was going to do with my life.  I might have been up here for only a few months and eventually make my way back down to Wisconsin.  Turns out I fell in love with Alaska and decided to stay like so many people do.  So before I left to come up here for the first time I boxed up all my old comics and trading cards and put them in a closet beneath the staircase in my parents house and when they sold that house and moved, I moved everything to the new closet underneath the stairs and that's where the bulk of my childhood collections still sit.  While the wife and I were down visiting my folks I ended up taking a little time to dig through the boxes and boxes of stuff and pulled out a bunch of stuff to mail up and to bring back with me.  These are the tales of what I brought back!!!!!!

While not everything I jammed into flat rate boxes and a spare suitcase is worth all that much there is a lot of memories associated with most of the stuff I chose to bring back up with me.

First up we have some long hidden autographs.  Years ago when my father retired from the army and the family moved back to Wisconsin I lived in the sleepy northern Wisconsin town of Tomahawk.  One weekend Cal Eldred and Jaime Navarro were doing a free autograph session at the mall in Wausau about 30 miles south.  So my brother and I dug through our card collection to try and find all the cards we could for those two.

When we got there the line was long, but not too bad.  You could get one thing signed by each player. Well after our first trip through the line my brother and I still had a bunch of cards to get signed so we got back in line, over and over again.  Eventually I think Cal just signed the rest of my cards.  I knew these were in the closet somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn't remember who signed them until I found them.

I've already gotten Jaime through the mail, but have yet to find a good address for Cal.  As you can see I had quite a few more Eldred cards than Navarro and both have great sig's.

Nothing like finding nine autographed cards in a random box in your closet.