So here we have a peacock, a fine feathered bird indeed and a really attractive card. And if you are wondering what the connection is to our theme, well the peacock does indeed have fine feathers but he displays them at the slightest opportunity.
Humans can be like that too, showing off the things they buy and do - whilst others do not have such things or have other calls on their money and cannot afford them, and so they feel aggrieved, make out they have them, or even get into debt. Yet the truth is that there are many beautiful things we can show online which cost nothing – the sunset or sunrise, smiles, a peaceful landscape. You may not get as many followers or likes, but is that what life is for? I think not. Our World Tobacco Issues Indexes both describes this set as
BIRDS OF THE TROPICS. Bkld. (50)
A. Small. Ref.USA/5
B. Large. Ref. USA/38
The only difference is that in the updated version the A and B are dropped to lower case, and both appear on the same line.
The USA code takes us to Jefferson Burdick`s “American Card Catalog”, but there is not much of a description, merely “5. Birds of the Tropics. (50)” and a valuation, of .10 cents. The large cards were valued higher, at .30 cents, and remember the large cards are the same small card with a more elaborate design filling the space to each side.
However if we hunt a little longer through the pages we find that this set was also printed up as what Mr. Burdick calls a tobacco album. He gives this the card code of A4, and values it at $3.
In case you have not come across these items before, they were pre-printed with all the cards displayed inside, and they were exchanged for coupons, packed inside the cigarettes, and not for sending back your completed set.
There are several opinions as to why they were made. Mr. Burdick believed that they “were probably intended to replace the individual cards if the smoker so desired, or at least enable him to own the entire collection of designs without the difficulty attendant to obtaining all the individual cards in a set.”
I have a bit of a theory that the actual cards were more attractive to the general smoker, who could tell of how long it took them to acquire one or two particular ones to complete his set, but that if a person wanted to show off about their collection, and impress people, then having this decorative album was a bit more upmarket.
Back to our starting theme again, eh?
We also know that seven Allen & Ginter albums were only ever printed as albums, not cards, though Mr. Burdick tells us that cards, albeit in proof form, were known of one of those series, this being “World’s Inventors”. Curiously these proof cards are not mentioned in our updated World Tobacco Issues Index. Were they discovered to be an album cut and made into fake proofs? Does anyone know more? Or does anyone own them, still?
The printed albums are not listed in our original World Tobacco Issues Index, but they are in the updated version, where it tells us our one measures 229 x 153 and has ten pages plus covers.