Card-O “Aeroplanes - Series C”
Card-O Chewing Gum, Leaf Gum Company, United States, R112-4

• Series Title: Aeroplanes - Series C
• American Card Catalog Reference No.: R112-4
• Manufactured by: Leaf Gum Company, Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Packaged With: Card-O Chewing Gum
• Number of Cards: 56 total: 28 “Plain” Back, 28 “Joker” Back
• Numbering: Unnumbered
• Card Dimensions: 2¼ × 3½ inches (PLC Format)
• Circa: 1940-1941
• Checklist: Download

R112 “Card-O” Series 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.

Card-O “Aeroplanes - Series C”

“Aeroplanes - Series C” (Card-O) contains twenty-eight basic aircraft images. However, there were two varieties of the set issued by the Leaf Gum Company. The first variety, “Plain” Back, has a simple text description on the reverse side of the card. The second variety, “Joker” Back contains the word “Joker” in opposite diagonal corners of the card.

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 of the R112-4 Card-O variety. The Whitman Airplane Card Games share much of the artwork that is used in the R112-4 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 series. The card dimensions are 2¼ × 3½ inches with rounded corners. The American Card Catalog reference number for the set is R112-4.

Card-O R112-4 “Aeroplanes - Series C

The R112-4 Image Guide is presented in two sections: (1) the cards with “plain” Backs, and (2) the cards with “Joker” Backs. Behind each of the following thumbnail images are 600-dpi images of the fronts and Backs of each card. All the images have a computer enhanced for presentation purposes.

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 five 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.

R112-4 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 B., 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.