Glevum Sports Playing Cards Set and Checklist

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	Glevum Sports Playing Cards
Year	Unknown
Size	2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″
Images	Color
Type	Game
Number in Set	36

Glevum Sports Playing Cards Set Overview

Glevum Playing Cards Tennis This interesting issue featured a total of 36 playing cards. While 36 is commonly cited, I have heard that 48 may have been a possibility, too.

These cards were playing cards and featured various pictures of generic athletes on them. Most notably, the athletes are all part of families with a family representing a specific sport. For example, tennis is one of the sports featured. The tennis subset includes cards picturing a father, mother, son, daughter, grandfather, and grandmother.

Unlike other playing cards, these have square shapes with sharp corners as opposed to the more common rounded corner sets.

The set is very similar to the UK Happy Families sets, which were produced in the pre-war era. Most of these were purely non-sports issues but this one is entirely a sports issue. And one of the Happy Families sets produced in 1939 by Wills featured a tennis card.

Some of the cards have distinguishing characteristics as opposed to others in the subsets. For example, the father in the tennis subset essentially declares him as the champion as he is pictured with a champion trophy in the background. In the boating subset, two of the family members have distinctive names on their boats.

Additionally, some of the family members are not always depicted as active participants in the sports. In the cricket series, for instance, the grandmother is only a spectator while the daughter is manning the scoreboard.

Finally, collectors should be careful not to confuse these with other Glevum cards. Glevum was a game brand and produced numerous board games and also games with cards. Among their releases was a 48-card Happy Families game set that had a similar theme/look but featured non-sports cards.

I am not aware of an actual date on this set but it is commonly dated from anywhere in the early 1900s through the 1930s.