32 Non-Sport Update

This Means

WAR!

TOP OF THE CROP

BY SCOTT THOMAS

HORRORS OF WAR (Gum Inc., 288-card set)

 e most storied title of its era; Life Magazine’s

multi-page picture essay in the May 9, 1938

issue o ered HofW invaluable publicity, a

lesson absorbed by future card makers. Many

war card collectibles, some by Gum Inc. or

Goudey, others by unnamed publishers, sub-

sequently followed. Horrors of War, though,

remains a hobby touchstone nearly 80 years

a er its debut.

WORLD WAR I SCENES (ACC designation:

T121, Sweet Caporal, 250 cards) World War I

tested the nation’s existence as a world power.

Although British cigarette card manufacturers

printed contemporary accounts of the Euro-

pean con ict, scant o erings from the U.S.

 rm American Tobacco Co. appeared. Sweet

Caporal cigarettes, one of the ATC’s brands

that participated in the famed T206 Base

Ball players 1909 issue, lent its name to this

color-tinted photo issue. Published sometime

in late 1914, card backs boast of “Up to the

minute war pictures... (t)wo new subjects

every day.”

WAR GUM (Gum Inc., 132 cards) In the

T

he year 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of America’s entrance into the First World

War. It seems appropriate, if borderline trivial, to consider how picture cards related,

captured or exploited the nation’s participation in international armed con ict.

WAR GUM WRAPPER (GUM INC. 1941-42)