This series of sets is said to have been issued in Belgium (titled "Danses Nationales"), Germany (as "Nationaltanze V"), Italy (as "Danzze Nazionali"), and the Netherlands (as "Nationale Dansen").
However our card is definitely in French. Hopefully a Liebig collector can tell us if this is scarce or I have erred when I typed them out?
Germany is the only one of these which calls it "set V". You may think, and rightly, that this was because they were the only country who issued all five of the sets - but Italy did as well : whereas Belgium only issued set I and set V, and the Netherlands only issued set II and set V.
The easiest printing of our set to acquire, by the way, is the Belgian one - with the German and Italian turning up fairly often, and almost as cheaply too. However the Dutch version is harder to come by, and often priced at £75-£100.
The cards in our set are :
- France - Le Cotillon (formal ball)
- Germany - Danse Rustique (country dance)
- Italy - La Tarantelle (tarantella)
- Scotland - La Gigue (jig)
- Tirol - La Rapide (no idea!)
- Turkey - La Danse du Sabre (sword dance)
As for their predecessors, they were :
set I (1891 - F.0239 : S.0238) - issued in Belgium. France, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain. Our version is by far the scarcest.
set II (1891 - F.0308 : S.0300) - issued in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. The Spanish version is the rare one here.
set III (1892 - F.0341 : S.0340) - this set has a subtitle, "kinder", in the German version which alerts the buyer that it features children dancing. It was issued in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, and Italy. The German one is the only one that turns up with any regularity, the Italian version is expensive, but seems less so when you see the Hungarian and Czech versions priced at almost a thousand pounds a set.
set IV (1892 - F.0342 : S.0341) - issued in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The Spanish version is again the scarce one