Card of the Day - 2023-01-15

Kinney Surf Beauties
Kinney Tobacco Co. [tobacco : O/S : USA] "Surf Beauties" (1889) Bk/50 - K524-425 : K32-23 : USA/232 : N/232

This card shows Coney Island, and Coney is another name for a rabbit.  How the rabbit and the island became connected is usually said to be because there were lots of rabbits there before they started building. 

Coney Island is in New York, and was once indeed an  island but silting and assistance turned it into a long peninsula which now includes Brighton and Manhattan Beaches. It was a seaside resort by the 1850s, though that was a slow burn as the first hotel had been built in 1829, and the amusements followed afterwards, starting in the late 1870s, and continued until the Second World War, which almost finished them off. However today it is again a popular area, thanks to it being the location of several cult films. 

If you look along the coastline you will see an elephant. This was the Elephant Hotel, and you could stay in one of its rooms if you so desired. The front legs housed a cigar store. It was built in 1885, but it did not last as a plush hotel for very long, falling out of favour and being used for all kinds of purposes before it burned down in 1896. 

Kinney Tobacco Company was also known as Kinney Bros, but this card uses the first permutation. They were based in New York. This card measures 68 x 36 m/m, and it is backlisted, which means that the titles of all the cards appear on the reverse of every card. This was quite a cunning ploy, for it instantly provided you with the information to ask for a card by title or to see in advance whether there was a special card that meant something more to you. 

By the way, Jefferson Burdick valued them in his checklist as being 15 cents each card. 

Curiously there are British Beaches listed in the set. These are  Ramsgate -  Scarborough - and - Brighton which appear all together below each other at the top of the right hand side, and  Torquay  which is further below them still. This is because for some reason they have put Torquay in France. I have no idea why this happened, and though I have looked, I have not been able to find any place called Torquay in France - however if you can please let us know.