Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Sets in my Collection #20-21-22: Wings Cigarettes series

 I wrote up to #34 in this series back in 2015, time to start getting some posted!

A Three-for-one post, as these sets, while different, are also the same. Huh?

In 1940, 1941 and 1942, Wings Cigarettes issued four sets of trading cards that all used the same designs, and, I believe, some of the same illustrations with different card numbers.

In 1940, the original set was issued. Later in 1940, it was reissued as Series A. (I have none of the Series A cards). In 1941, a different checklist, but with the same design, was issued as Series B. In 1942. Series C was issued. All used the same design and featured a mixture of military and civilian aircraft.

Here are scans of each of the three series I have.




Notice that certain details of the fighting planes have been left off, and also, interestingly, the images are clearly drawings but are labeled as photographs.

I have about a dozen combined cards from the sets, with the majority of cards in my collection being from the original 1940 release. They are small, slightly above half the size of a modern standard sized card, but wider than the tobacco standard.

There are other sets using the same design but different names. They do not yet appear in my collection. 

3 comments:

  1. Oh wow those are beauties! That Curtiss is my fave of the three.

    I think the plane my father was training on when WWII ended was a Martin bomber. Dunno the model. He was going to be a navigator. He never finished training with the USAAC as the war ended and he was discharged.

    The package headed out to you today btw.

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  2. Pretty cool! I got to see the last B-25 flying fly by my house last year. I suspect that's the plane he was on, considering how prevalent they were. But I'm still in the early learning stage of aircraft so I could be wrong!

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