H804-39 Duke’s Cigarettes Cameo Studies Trade Cards Set and Checklist

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	H804-39 Duke’s Cigarettes Cameo Studies Trade Cards
Year	1800s
Size	2 15/16″ x 3 15/16″
Images	Black and White
Type	Trade
Number in Set	10

H804-39 Duke’s Cigarettes Cameo Studies Trade Cards Overview

H804-39 Duke Cameo Studies Dudeana Pitcher Trade Card This set is part of the baseball comic series of trade cards. Noted collector Frank Keetz assigned it the designation used in his book, “Baseball Advertising Trade Cards 3rd Edition.”

The scarce set includes silhouetted females in a variety of baseball scenes. The border is a wood grain one, seemingly depicting a baseball bat.

Each card has the ‘Cameo Studies’ name at the top and a caption at the bottom. Cameo Studies was a Duke Cigarettes brand so this can be considered both a tobacco card issue and a trade card of sorts. Because of that, I have listed it in both the N-Card and H-Card sections of this site.

One of the key distinguishing features of these cards, aside from the fact that they have unique drawings, is that they are printed on thin paper as opposed to cardstock. That makes them even more fragile than regular trade cards. Finding these cards in any condition is extremely difficult and they rarely are offered for sale. How scarce are they? I’ve personally seen only a handful of these and none have been graded by PSA and SGC.

Backs of the cards were interesting. They featured an advertisement for the Cameo Studies brand and talked about how other, older cigarette makers were copying their product. The cards went on to mention that those brands were essentially stealing the Cameo sliding box. Cameo notes, though, that those brands still have more work to do in improving the quality of their paper, tobacco, and workmanship. Cameo cigarettes were sold ten for five cents or 20 for ten cents.

Non-Sports Subjects

While the baseball cards from this set are generally the key ones, it should be pointed out that non-sports subjects appear to exist, too.

This Net54 thread identifies such a card, picturing a cigarette maker. These types of pictures are somewhat common with cigarette makers found in other sets, too. What is unclear, however, is how many other types of subjects exist. These cards, like the baseball cards, seem to be extremely rare.

The non-sports subjects were not cataloged to my knowledge by Keetz. However, they have the same design as the baseball issues with the wood grain borders and the same font used for the ‘Cameo Studies’ name and caption below.