VintageMeld

I guess these might more accurately be described as premiums than cards as they are far from normal tobacco card size at 3-3/16″ X 4-1/2″ and they are not issued on card stock but instead a thick stock paper.

Myrna Loy

There is nothing to identify the company who issued these premiums unless of course you are familiar with the big eagle emblazoned across the back of each piece (and if you are, please comment below!). Below the eagle in text which I had to decipher by holding the card a few inches from my eye under a bright light are the words “Indresora Uruguaya S.A.,” which at least gives us Uguguay as the nation of issue.

My best guess is that they were a premium item issued with a tobacco product in Uruguay. But I’m not familiar with the eagle, there’s every possibility it’s the logo for a candy company or some other product.

Also of mystery would be the date on these, though a set of this size, and we’re going to expand beyond 300 cards below, was likely issued over a number of years. I’ve yet to sort through the bubble names, those youthful or aging stars whose careers and/or lives may give clues as to the issue date, but they seem consistent with most mid-1930’s sets. The most obvious clue would seem to be the inclusion of Rita Hayworth before she was made-over into Rita Hayworth. The IMDb puts her appearances billed as Rita Cansino between 1935 and ‘37. I’ll stick with mid-1930’s for now.

Rita Cansino (Hayworth)

What’s interesting about these cards/premiums are the possibilities they present for the set collector. In the batch I acquired I immediately noted the different colored backs–gray, by far being the most common in my group, but also brown and blue. Most of the fronts I saw were issued in a brown tone, but there were also green toned and color-tinted cards. It was when I was pulling the few duplicates that were in my batch that the real intrigue appeared–cards of the same player with different colored fronts and/or back presenting us with a myriad of possibilities when it comes to collecting this issue as a set.

Examples of the different reverse sides

I’m posting here prior to adding a Photo ID Guide to my other site, things-and-other-stuff.com, but you can currently find more information on these over on Troy Kirk’s Movie Card Website. What Troy spotted that I completely missed was that there are also variations in the print on the identifying text at the bottom of each card (card number and player’s name). He also notes both a light and dark brown tone on front.

I’m posting these notes here rather than over at the Movie Collectible site because I’m actually awaiting more cards right now. In the first batch I acquired there were 150 assorted cards including duplicates and I’m now awaiting another 125 from the same source. I’ve put singles from the first group available for sale, and you can see some of those at the bottom of this post, but I’m going to wait on the arrival of batch #2 before I put together the official Photo ID Guide for things-and-other-stuff.com.

One of the few sets where I've seen Dr. Frankenstein himself, Colin Clive, included

This is another issue that I had handled a few years back and made the mistake of thinking they were more common than they apparently are. I have seen other singles available from time to time, but this latest grouping is the first big batch I’ve run across in at least 3-4 years, possibly longer. That said, and while I suspect due to geography alone they are in no way common, I don’t believe that they are super-rare. Far from official terminology I’d likely go with the phrase somewhat rare when describing these.

What makes these Uruguayan premiums intriguing to collect is that a collector could start out just trying to assemble a set of 300 (and like Troy, I’ve not run across any numbered higher than 300) in any possible combination: brown fronts, green fronts, gray backs, blue backs, etc, and surely that would be in a task itself. But upon completing the 300 card set the real possibilities open up, for if you figure a bare minimum of 3 variations each, front and back, we’re talking about 9 different versions of each card and thus assembling a 2,700 card set. If you go beyond that to factor possible text variations into that then the number becomes exponentially larger.

So there’s lot of fun to be had for the obsessive here, though beyond completing a base set one has to wonder about the availability–it could become a life’s work.