Six Hobby Haunting Graves

Looking for a good scare?  Or perhaps just some good old fashion cardboard history?  Then you’ve come to the right place.

This hobby has a long history.  It wouldn’t be around today if it weren’t for certain individuals.  The idea of pack-inserted cards had to come from somewhere.

Here are my top six hobby haunting grave sites.  I wonder if their tombs hold some undiscovered cardboard treasures?  Que evil laugh!

Jefferson Burdick – Hillside Memorial Cemetery and Park, Central Square, Oswego County, New York. – Created the American Card Catalog.  Assigned letters and numbers to the different card styles and became the default method for organizing pre-1951 sets.  His collection of over 306,000 cards is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

John Allen – Shockoe Hill Cemetery, Richmond, Richmond City, Virginia. – The first half of the Allen & Ginter name brand.  Allen & Ginter was a tobacco manufacturer and created some of the first tobacco cards designed to be collected.  Very colorful and eye appealing.  Subjects include sports figures, inventors, entertainers, and animals.

Lewis Ginter – Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Richmond City, Virginia. – You can’t have John Allen without Lewis Ginter.  He is the second half of the Allen & Ginter brand.  Eventually Allen & Ginter would merge with four other tobacco manufacturers and be called the American Tobacco Company.

Sy Berger – Beth Moses Cemetery, West Babylon, Suffolk County, New York. – Longtime Topps employee for over 50 years.  Co-designer of the 1952 Topps Baseball set.  Father of the modern baseball card.

The Dukes – Duke University Chapel, Durham, Durham County, North Carolina. – Washington, James, and Benjamin Duke were tobacco titans atop the American Tobacco Company.  They are credited with the idea of inserting cardboard advertisements into product packaging featuring entertainers, politicians, and sports figures.

John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll – Kilmun Parish Church and Cemetery,
Kilmun, Argyll and Bute, Scotland. – In 1879 this man became the first individual to be featured on a pack-inserted tobacco card.  Only four copies of this card are known to exist.  The brand of tobacco it came in was called Marquis of Lorne named after a title he held.  Unfortunately the brand did not sell well.