1888 Allen & Ginter Racing Colors (A12) Album and Checklist

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

1888 Allen and Ginter Racing Colors Album (A12)

Allen and Ginter’s Racing Colors offering was released in 1888 and included a total of 50 cards. Cataloged as N88, the cards depict female horse racing jockeys representing stables.

Like many 19th century tobacco issues, an accompanying album was printed as a premium item. The album included pictures of the cards in the set. The album is also listed in the American Card Catalog and is designated as A12.

The albums are fairly rare and include a series of loose pages held together with a string. Because the albums were not formally bound, it is fairly common to see individual pages as opposed to a complete album.

Cut Cards

The albums come up for sale on occasion but are rare. They can be found as complete albums, in individual pages, or sometimes the individual cards on each page have been cut out.

Cut out cards do hold some value but are not as valuable as the actual cards that were included in packs of cigarettes or other tobacco products. The cards in the album do not include the checklist that appeared on the backs of many of the regular cards that came with the cigarettes. However, the images of the jockeys remained the same.

These albums were clearly used by collectors for different purposes. Some collectors, as mentioned, cut the cards out, preferring to have individual cards instead of the album. Others affixed their own regular cards to the album over top of the pictures on the pages as a way to store their original cards. Because of that, you will sometimes find cards that were glued to album pages, and subsequently removed, with damaged backs.