1931 J.A. Pattreiouex Sports Trophies Set and Checklist

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	J.A. Pattreiouex Sports Trophies
Year	1931
Size	1 3/8″ x 2 5/8″
Images	Color
Type	Tobacco
Number in Set	50

1931 J.A. Pattreiouex Sports Trophies Set Overview

1931Pattreioux Sports Trophies Baseball This set included 50 cards featuring prestigious sports trophies. The cards were distributed by Manchester tobacco company J.A. Pattreiouex for its cigarette brands. The Quality Cigarettes name is printed at the top of the fronts.

The cards featured color pictures of trophies from sports around the world. While all are sports issues, cards featuring baseball, golf, and tennis are highly desirable to American collectors.

Some, such as a card for the Gordon Bennett Cup given to the ‘Champion Dog’ at the Pekin Palace Dog Show, are less interesting to most. Other sports represented in the set include things such as soccer, rugby, polo, yachting, bowling, cycling, and rowing.

The baseball trophy was not the World Series trophy. Instead, it was the Baseball Cup, which was a silver cup awarded to the winner of the British Baseball Competition. The trophy, as pictured here, also had a topper of a baseball player on it.

Many of the trophies will not be familiar with American collectors as the majority were not distributed here. However, some are well-known, such as the Davis Cup.

The set is rare and not easily found, particularly in the United States. They will occasionally surface on eBay and are mostly sold by international dealers.

A Belt … not a Trophy

1931 J.A. Pattreioux Sporting Trophies Charlie Mitchell Belt Boxing One of the more interesting cards is for the sport of boxing.

The card pictures a championship belt instead of a trophy. Card No. 24 pictures the belt given to Charlie Mitchell after fighting champion John Sullivan. Interestingly, Mitchell did not actually defeat Sullivan, only fighting him to a draw. The fight was said to last 39 rounds and more than three hours.

While it might seem odd to award a championship belt to a boxer that didn’t win, the draw was viewed as a tremendous achievement. Mitchell was soundly defeated by Sullivan in 1883 and Sullivan was unbeaten.

Heritage auctioned the actual belt off in 2015 with it selling for more than $50,000.