Cigarette Cards: ABCs

Vivex Colour Photo Instantaneus Camera (Cigarette card, Age of Power and Wonder, published ca. 1935-1938). From Cigarette Cards: ABCs. "...The cigarette card series in this digital presentation comprise just the beginning of the Library's extensive, international collection of tobacco cards, which now numbers more than 125,000 individual items, including more than 3000 complete sets. While bibliophile George Arents (1875-1960) did not collect cigarette cards, he provided an endowment for the continued growth of his comprehensive collection on tobacco (whose processing and packaging had provided his fortune), which he had begun donating to NYPL in 1944. In addition to literature and artworks, the tobacco collection's scope has come to encompass a wide range of visual materials and printed ephemera associated with that commodity. The cigarette cards were acquired by curators in the 1960s and later."