Dainty Series Sports Silhouettes Card Game Set and Checklist

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	Dainty Series Sports Silhouettes
Year	1920s (?)
Size	3 5/16″ x 5 1/4″
Images	Black Ink
Type	Game Cards
Number in Set	24

Dainty Series Sports Silhouettes Set Overview

Dainty Series Sports SIlhouettes Boxing Card This interesting set of cards is actually a party game. The cards are uniquely designed featuring silhouettes of generic athletes.

Each card front includes a silhouette of an athlete in a particular sport. The Sports Silhouettes name is printed at the top of each card along with a card number. The cards state they are part of the ‘The Dainty Series’ along with the identifying alphanumeric combination of G619. Cards also indicate they were copyrighted in England.

They have blank backs and are often reported as postcard-sized. They are actually a bit shy of that, measuring a small amount shorter than most postcard issues, however.

While I have not seen the exact instructions for the game, the idea seems to be to determine which sport is being played on the silhouette. I say that because the name of the sport is not printed anywhere on the cards. Some would be quite obvious to sports fans but others, harder to discern.

The card number printed on these corresponds to a list on the box that serves as a key. The list indicates which sport is depicted on which card number.

A total of 24 cards are in the set and it includes baseball, boxing, golf, tennis, wrestling, soccer, track and field, and more. One note regarding the sports included is that a card is checklisted for hockey. However, that is for field hockey and not ice hockey, which would surely be appreciated more by American collectors.

Regarding the dating of this issue, it is commonly called a 1920s set. However, I have not been able to confirm that and have also seen it listed as possibly a 1930s set.

The cards are quite rare and not seen too often, even on large marketplaces, such as eBay.

Dainty Series Advertising Set

While the sports series cards are the most popular ones, there is at least one other similar card set that was produced.

This one was called ‘Advertisement Silhouettes.’ Instead of pictures of athletes, these were silhouettes of logos and mascots for companies and products. As participants were supposed to guess the sport being depicted on those cards, they were required to identify the business being represented by the silhouetted logo. There were also 24 cards in this set as well.

While there are not sports cards in this set, it is notable that some of the companies in it produced sports cards, including Capstan (which produced soccer and cricket cards) and Sarony (which produced tennis, multi-sport, and mixed sport/non-sport sets). Both Capstan and Sarony were cigarette brands, explaining their link to card inserts.