1940s Mutoscope Pin-Up Exhibits Sets and Checklist

Posted on September 15, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	Mutoscope Pin-up Exhibits
Year	1940s
Size	3 3/8″ x 5 3/8″
Images	Color
Type	Exhibit
Number in Set	Varies

1940s Mutoscope Pin-up Exhibits Overview

The Mutoscope Pin-Up exhibit cards included racy pictures of women. While the cards were mostly a non-sports series, several ‘sports’ cards are found in it. One big misconception is that Mutoscope cards were their own ‘type’ of card. But the Mutoscope name is similar to the Exhibit name. The cards were produced by the Mutoscope company, just as Exhibit was a company.

Today, all of these cards are sort of lumped together and called exhibit cards, but the reality is, these ‘exhibit’ style of cards were produced by many different companies. Mutoscope is simply one of those. Mutoscope produced more than just these cards. However, these cards depicting women are possibly the most famous of all of Mutoscope’s cards.

The type of card, of course, is roughly the size of a postcard. Most were blank-backed, though some can be found with a postcard backing. The fronts pictured women, often in various states of undress, and suggestive titles.

While many sports are featured, the most sought after ones are typically the cards depicting baseball, boxing, and golf. At least two different baseball cards and two different golf cards are known. One of the baseball cards pictures a fielder while the other shown here simply pictures a woman with the suggestive phrase, “Sure, show me a diamond and I’ll play ball.”

These cards are typically all grouped together as the Pin-up series. But the overall series is actually made up of many different sets identified below:

1940 Glorified Glamour Girls (32 cards)
1941 All-American Girls (32 cards)
1942 Yankee Doodle Girls and Multiple (6-in-1) Cards (32 cards)
1943 Hot’ Cha Girls (65 cards)
1944 Follies Girls (32 cards)
1945 Artist Pin-Up Girls (64 cards)

After these cards, others were printed in the 1950s (Slick Chick Twins and Poems). Also note that while the number in each set is listed, several of the cards have more than one minor variation. Thus, a true master series of all of the sets includes roughly 100 more cards.

Some of the pictures of cards were used on other products, such as ink blotters.

1940s Mutoscope Pin-up Exhibits Checklist

For a full checklist of the cards, visit this website. The known sports issues are below — others may exist. In addition, some of the images on these cards are found on the 6-in-1 multi-sport cards mentioned above.