What a lovely card this is, and the black is very suitable for Hallowe`en. However you might be puzzled about what it is doing here?
Well, let me explain. In Rome, the Forum was the centre of many activities, it was where people gathered together to meet, often in groups, some of which were devoted to special interests. Buying and selling also took place, and there was a range of entertainment or educational events. In short, it was a great place to hang out and find out what was going on.
The Forum in Rome is no longer going, but there are several forums on the internet, and though many of them are based in America, this can but broaden our horizons. Now as far as I have managed to find out, anyone with a spare few minutes can go in and have a look around for free, but you want to take part in a discussion, or answer one of the queries, you need to join.
Some of these are devoted to special interests, especially sport - Cardzreview and Sportscardforum for modern cards, especially football - and then there is the P.S.A. which says it is for trading cards and memorabilia, but also seems to be primarily sports based.
Then, on the other hand, we have the Vintage Non Sports Forum, which, rather a long while ago (I am ashamed to work out how long ago) was recommended to me, but I never did anything about it. However the winter is coming on for us all, and who knows, it might be a fun way to spend a bit of spare time, its definitely better than listening to the news. So if there are any members reading, of any of these sites or others I have not yet traced, just drop us a line.
As to our card, there is a strange thing, for five of the back headings advertise different brands of chocolate, including Dr. Michaelis' Eichel Cacao, which was a brand bought out by Stollwerck, not sure when, but it is very interesting as "Eichel" means acorn. And yes, you can make coffee from acorns, even at home. Our card, though, lists places, which translates to "Made in Cologne, Berlin, Pressburg and New-York. Branches in Berlin, Leipzig, Breslau, Munich, Frankfurt, etc". The "etc"s were Bremen, Amsterdam, Brussels, Budapest, Chicago and Vienna, and they also had factories in Berlin, Bratislava, London and New York.
Now I was surprised by the mention of New York, but research has discovered that Stollwerck was the second largest chocolate maker in the United States by the year 1900. This came about through Stollwerck`s sons, five of them, including Ludwig, who introduced the idea of vending machines in 1887. The mention of Chicago is also interesting, as they had a stand there, at the World`s Columbian Exposition in 1893. A year later they picked up a partner, a German businessman called John Volkmann, and then the vending machines really started to take off - by the end of the century there were few New York stations without at least one on site.
This grouping, fitting in album number five, covered sets from number 200 to 259 - and within the same album was the set of "Von der Wildbahn" / "From the Wild" (Gruppe 213) - one of which we featured as our Card of the Day for the 19th of August 2024, and, coincidentally, that advertised Acorn Coffee !
No card list this time, because you can see all the cards of this set at the Trading Card Database/Stollwerck/AntikeTheater.