“Aeroplanes - Series B” (R112-3)
Card-O Chewing Gum, Leaf Gum Company, United States, R112-3

• Series Title: Aeroplanes - Series B
• American Card Catalog Reference No.: R112-3
• Manufactured by: Leaf Gum Company, Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Packaged With: Card-O Chewing Gum
• Number of Cards: 82 total
• 28 “Plain Text”cards
• 27 “Joker” cards
• 27 “Stag-Joker” cards
• Numbering: Unnumbered
• Card Dimensions: 2¼ × 3½ inches (PLC Format)
• Circa: 1940-1941
• Checklist: Download R112-3 Checklist

R112 “Card-O” Overview

According to The Card Collectors Bulletin (issue No. 48, June 1, 1947), the cards of this group were all issued by Leaf Gum. Many, if not all, of the artwork drawings of airplanes and warships in all five sets appeared in Whitman's patriotic books. The book noted below contains the artwork for all the cards in this set. The Card Collectors Bulletin also reported that on 1 December 1948 Leaf Gum Company “dumped” its surplus Card-O gum cards on the market after the war. A partially-full Leaf display was purchased by a collector and was found to contain airplane cards from Series B, C, D and the unmarked, so-called “mixed” series of 46. The gum was wrapped in individual sticks and purchasers apparently got a stick and their choice of card for a penny.

R112-3 “Aeroplanes - Series B”

The R112-3 “Aeroplanes - Series B” contains twenty-seven (27) basic aircraft images with a “mirror-image” duplicate card of the XP-42 which brings the total to 28 images. There were also two Supermarine Spitfire cards: (1) SUPERMARINE SPITFIRE (England) marked FZL and (2) SUPERMARINE SPITFIRE (Britain) marked QJF. The “QJF” uses the same Back as the “FZL” card. The two XP-42 and the two Spitfire cards would explain the difference between the notation on the Back “26 cards” versus the actual number of 28 cards. However, there were a total of three distinct varieties of the set issued by the Leaf Gum Company via their Card-O Chewing Gum. To make things a little more confusing, Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin also issued two series of “Zoom Airplane Card Games” that are often confused as being a R112-3 variety. The Whitman Airplane Card Games share much of the artwork that is used in the R112-3 series. It should be noted that the Whitman Publishing Company is the original source of the artwork used in the series. Their wartime booklets contain the original artwork used with this series and many others series such as the Tydol UO-1 series.

Accord to the late veteran Airplane Card Collector, Richard Dahlquist, of Holden MA, the XP-42 (facing right) card appears only once in the series. It is only in the cards with the “Plain Text” Backs series. The total number of cards in the R112-3 series is therefore 82 cards. Image guides for the three varieties are shown below. The card dimensions are 2¼ × 3½ inches with rounded corners. The American Card Catalog reference number for the set is R112-3.

Aeroplanes - Series B Image Guides

The following Image Guides are divided into three groups showing the three different types of card Backs. Behind each of the following thumbnail images are 600-dpi images of the fronts and Backs of each card.

Wrapper and Retail Store Display Box

All we have at this time is the information that we obtained from “The Sport Americana® PRICE GUIDE to the Non-Sports Cards 1930-1960, Vol. 2” by Christopher Benjamin. According to Benjamin, Card-O Chewing Gum stick wrapper purchasers got one stick of gum and their choice of a card for a penny. The Retail Store Display box shown below came with a lift cover. Each box also contained a stand-up insert panel with the same design as the cover lid. We are not sure which of the many Card-O series (R112-3, R112-4, R112-12, etc.) used the wrapper and the box show below. Any insight into this would be appreciated.

Albums versus Original Artwork

To the best of our knowledge, Leaf Gum did not issue any companion albums with this series. However, the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin issued a series of wartime booklets that contained the original artwork used by Leaf Gum for this series. The artwork is spread over at least six of these 3⅝ × 5¾ inch booklets. The artwork was also used in the Tydol UO-1 “Aeroplane” series, the Spaulding Krullers D87 and DC-6 series, and a similar Cracker Jack series. To date, we know of the following six booklets. There might be more of them out there, but we have not seen them.

Checklist

We have included two versions of checklist: (1) the web version shown below, and (2) an Adobe® Acrobat® PDF 8½ × 11 inch format checklist.

Special Thanks

We would like to thank the following for their contributions to this section: (1) Albert B. Kramer of Roll-EZ Wheels, Inc. for lending us his Card-O collection to scan; (2) the late Richard Dahlquist of Holden, Massachusetts for providing valuable incite into the composition of the Card-O series; (3) Vladislav Kuchta of the Czech Republic for sending us a scan of the Card-O Store Retail Box Display; and (4) Chris Sheppard for send us a scan info about Whitman's “Airplanes of the U.S.A.” companion booklet. Be sure to visit their websites via the links below.

References

1. Dahlquist, Richard (RIP), Numerous telephone, email, and snail-mail conversations.
2. Shupek, John A., Card images from the Skytamer Archive
3. Kramer, Albert, Cards scans from the Kramer Collection
4. Kuchta, Vladisla, 2/19/2010 email, Scan of Card-O Retail Sore Display Box
5. Sheppard, Christopher, 8/4/2008 email, “Airplanes of the U.S.A.” Booklet scan and information
6. Benjamin, Christopher, The Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards 1930-1960 No. 2, Edgewater Book Company, Cleveland, Ohio, ISBN 0-937424-66-8, 1993, pp. 40-48.