1925 Turf Cigarettes Sports Records / Boguslavsky Set

Posted on November 25, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	Turf Cigarettes/Boguslavsky
Year	1925
Size	1 1/2″ x 2 5/8″
Images	Color
Type	Tobacco
Number in Set	50

Turf Cigarettes Sports Records / Boguslavsky Set Overview

International pre-war baseball cards aren’t always easy to track down, but a rare UK issue offers collectors one of them – the 1925 Turf Cigarettes Sports Records / Boguslavsky set.

The set consists of a total of 50 cards. A first series was printed for cards No. 1-25 and a second included cards 26-50. The athletes depicted with color photographs with a title for the sport printed at the bottom. Backs include a brief description of a particularly record that was held.

Most of the athletes in the set were from sports outside of the ‘big four’ and aren’t widely known. But the set does include boxing champion Georges Carpentier. Names of the athletes weren’t printed only on the front where the name of the sport was named. Rather, they are in the bios on the back.

While no football, basketball, or hockey cards are found, there are numerous other sports familiar to American collectors such as boxing, soccer, golf, wrestling, and tennis.

Baseball / George Sisler

A George Sisler issue is the final card in the 50-card release (two series’). The set focuses on various sports records held by athletes around the world and Sisler is recognized for his batting average.

The Sisler card is interesting for a few reasons. The back states he was included in the set for establishing a new American League batting average record of .420. However, the record really belongs to Nap Lajoie, who established it in 1901 by hitting .426 when playing for the Philadelphia Athletics, a new American League team.

There was likely some confusion on the part of the creator of the card since Lajoie previously played for the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League until joining the Athletics in 1901.

The back of the Sisler card also mentions he would be added to a baseball monument. It doesn’t appear that monument was never actually created in the original form discussed, but had ties to some early origins for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I wrote more about the monument here.