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SPORTS AND PASTIMES OF ALL NATIONS
NON-ARBUCKLE USAGE

Although the cards in the Sports & Pastimes series bear an Arbuckle copyright dated 1893, their designs were also used on trade cards (presumably several years later) by several European companies.

I currently have quite a few examples for the Dutch/Belgian firm of Van Leckwyck, the English firm of Thomas Holloway (English and Spanish versions), the German firms of Jos. Huber, Carl Klingler, S. Osswald, Ludwig Stenger, and Weibezahn, and the French firms (or products) of A. Cardon Duverger, Avoyne & Poulain, Cafés Georges, Émile Bonzel (Chicorée a la Bergère), Paul Mairesse (Chicorée a la Française), Chicorée Lervilles, H. Sergent, Chocolat Besnier, Chocolat Carpentier, Mon. Ch. Denia, A. Chapu (Perles du Japon), Tapioca de L'Etoile, and Williot Fils. Jerry Anderson has provided images of several more Holloway's cards and another collector, Ian Woodyard, has supplied me with images of cards from the German/French store of A. Dreyfus.

Holloway's English language cards appear to use the original Arbuckles' text (or close to it) to describe the featured country, while their Spanish language cards carry an approximate translation, usually somewhat abridged. The Bonzel, Duverger, Chocolat Besnier, Lervilles, and Mairesse cards used a similar French text. Van Leckwyck, Sergent, Tapioca de L'Etoile, Avoyne & Poulain, Cafés Georges, Denia, Chapu, Huber, Klingler, Osswald, Stenger, Weibezahn, Williot Fils, and Dreyfus simply filled the back with a standard advertisement for their companies. The Chocolat Carpentier cards have blank backs. The two Holloway's versions are the only ones of the twenty-one that specifically indicate that they produced the entire series of 50, though it seems likely the others did, as well.

All of the Holloway's cards also seem to come in multiple varieties.  I've not tried to enumerate them in the table, below, but please see my Holloway's notes following the table if card varieties are of interest to you.

There appear to have been at least two different lithographers/printers for these European cards.  The German cards generally bear the logo of Liebes & Teichtner.  I have seen references by some dealers indicating that the others may have been printed by a French lithographer named Jeune Bognard.  However, so far only the A. Chapu cards I've acquired are actually marked “iBOGNARD, PARIS.”  Both printers seem to have been able to use the original master plates (or stones) used by Kaufman & Strauss for the Arbuckle cards, with the only changes to the designs being the addition of a white caption box at the bottom of each card, the removal of the Arbuckle copyright text, and the appropriate language changes to the country names.  How these printers managed to acquire the rights to use the Sports & Pastimes designs, or even whether they did so legally, remains a mystery.

A further complication has come to light with the discovery of a series of postcards using the S&P designs. These cards are larger than the trade cards, measuring 3½" x 5½", with a mostly blank ½" border added along the bottom and right edges of each card.  They're identified in small print along the bottom edge as "Nationalitäten-Postkarten Serie, 50 Dess.", with a card number (which differs from Arbuckles' numbering scheme) at the lower right corner.  No printer is identified, but text on the back may read "Postkarte" in German, or "LEVELEZÖ-LAP" in Hungarian. The Hungarian version may also have "Correspondenz-Karte" added, presumably for use in the Austrian portion of Austro-Hungary.

Examples of these cards may be seen by clicking on the country links or the individual check marks in the table, below:

A. Cardon Duverger
A. Chapu / Perles du Japon
A. Dreyfus
Avoyne & Poulain
Cafés Georges
Chocolat Besnier
Chocolat Carpentier
Émile Bonzel
H. Sergent
Holloway's (English)
Holloway's (Spanish)
Jos. Huber
Carl Klingler
Chicorée Lervilles
Mon. Ch. Denia
Paul Mairesse
S. Osswald
Ludwig Stenger
Tapioca de L'Étoile
Van Leckwyck (Antwerp)
Van Leckwyck (Rotterdam)
Weibezahn
Williot Fils
Nationalitäten (postcard)
Alaska / Greenland
Algeria
American Indians
American Negroes
Ancient Judea
Anglo Saxon
Arabia
Assyria
Australia
Austria
Brazil
Canada
Central Africa
Chili
China
Cuba
Denmark
Egypt
England
Esquimau
France
Germany
Greece
Gypsy
Hawaii
Holland
India
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Lapland
Medieval France
Mexico
Norway
Patagonia
Persia
Poland
Pompeii
Portugal
Rome
Russia
Scotland
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Thibet
Turkey
Tyrol
United States
Wales

Additional examples from these and other companies that may have used the Sports & Pastimes designs are always welcome.

>> Further Notes On HOLLOWAY'S SPORTS & PASTIMES Series <<

It's apparent that the English-language Holloway's Sports & Pastimes series was printed and distributed in at least two different periods in the early 20th Century.  It's possible that the Spanish-language cards were, as well, though I'm thus far unable to confirm that.

The original series was printed while Thomas Holloway was located at 78 New Oxford Street in London, while a reissue came out after the firm moved to 113 Southwark Street, also in London. According to collector Eric Rackow, who was kind enough to do a bit of research on the subject and pass it along to me, the New Oxford Street address was Holloway's home from 1881 to 1909, while Southwark Street was current from 1910-1931.

Besides the differences in Holloway's address, there is a significant difference in the format on the back of the cards.  While the leftmost portion of the backs on the original issue consisted of a "story" of one sort or another extolling the virtues of Holloway's Pills and Ointment, that section on the later cards is purely an advertising pitch.  There seem to be about a dozen different stories used in the original set, and at least three different advertising pitches used on the reissued cards, resulting in the possibility of multiple back varieties for each card in the series.

It seems to be commonly accepted that the Holloway's S&P cards were originally issued around 1900, though none bear copyright dates.  I've also run across an advertisement for this set, and others, from a 1903 edition of The Temperance Register (see Google Books), so either the original set was available for several years, or it could have been reprinted multiple times in the original "story" format, before the later reissue came along.

Varieties exist in the "Holloway's Sports & Pastimes of many Nations" caption on the front of several of the horizontally-formatted cards, such as Austria. The caption on such cards may or may not have ornamental embellishments flanking the caption. Why this occurred, I have no idea.

Other varieties came into existence because it appears that the printer goofed on at least one press run.  I've found that many of the cards exist with the OXFORD Street address spelled incorrectly as OXFORT Street.  For many, or perhaps all, of these cards, the error was apparently discovered before the cards were actually distributed.  However, rather than destroy the originals and then reprint them, new backs with the correct street name must have been printed on single-layer paper. These were then glued to the backs of the misprinted cards and these "corrected" cards then distributed normally.  These cards are, of course, thicker than cards that were correctly printed with OXFORD street in the first place.

Some cards with the misprinted OXFORT street name could certainly have been distributed before the error was discovered.  Others have likely been inadvertently exposed when cards have been soaked out of scrapbooks, and the "corrected" layer just happened to separate from the original back.  Others have certainly had their corrected backs deliberately soaked off (including by me) when a thicker than normal card was detected, in order to reveal the original printing.  Part of the reason for this is that the "story" printed on the originally misprinted back is very often, though not always, different from the one printed on the corrected back.  Why it would have been done this way, I have no idea.

At least a couple of cards have printing errors involving the country name on the front.  It appears that the printer may have inadvertently used cards for Holloway's that had first been printed with German names (see, for example, American Indians and Ancient Judea).

In any event, to get a look at all the Holloway's S&P varieties that have come to my attention, if such things interest you, you'll need to look at the cards for each individual "nation", as listed in the table, above.  I know of no comprehensive listing that consolidates all of them in one place. (And this is, after all, a site devoted primarily to Arbuckle Coffee cards!)