Excited, someone contacted me with some movie cards I hadn't seen before!

[Cliff Aliperti]

I thought this was pretty cool. Someone wrote me looking for information about Kromo Gravure movie cards -- these are black & white trading cards which were issued in various boxed sets of 50 in the late teens (more specifically likely about 1917). Over the past 8 years I've handled several of these and I think I've put together the best available checklists for them.

I'd thought I'd handled each of the boxed sets multiple times and cataloged them on my site as sets 1,2,3 -- which are sets whose boxes note "Kromo Gravure Set No. 1" ... No. 2 ... No. 3; the rounded border set, which is similar to the 1,2,3 sets, but with rounded inside borders rather than squared ones of the more common 1,2,3s; and the no border set, which to be honest the first time I handled I thought was a regular set which had been trimmed, but since then I've handled 4 or 5 more of these and now recognize them as a distinct set. The last Kromo Gravure related set I'd found was an oversized (similar to postcards) 10 card set containing the big stars (Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Douglas Fairbanks, etc.).

So I was pretty surprised when I was contacted by someone talking about have all 4 numbered sets. First he sent me a scan of some cards, which I immediately recognized as Kromos, then he sent me this:

...without a doubt confirming the existence of a fourth set! Guess I'll be referring to them as 1,2,3,4 from now on.

After a few more emails I made an offer, which is still open, but which I think will go unaccepted, but today this generous person took a block of their time to send me appx. 25 emails containing attachments showing all of his cards! He'd mentioned that the cards were likely mixed up in the four various boxes, but since I have complete checklists for the other sets I should be able to figure out the mystery cards by process of elimination.

Very excited to put this puzzle together and add the info to my site over the next few days.

Since I've shown you the boxes, here are a couple of examples of the cards I'm referring to as well:

Those are each from the 1,2,3 sets (Mary Pickford, Olive Thomas, Charlie Chaplin), and for comparisons sake I'll tack on one apiece from each the rounded border and no border sets:

I love this stuff!
Thanks for reading,Cliff

[Cliff Aliperti]

Thanks, Walt. I talked to him this morning, he's going to hold on to them, but as I said, he's sent all images so I will be able to cobble a web page out of this to be able to share with everyone. That's the main thing.

Thanks,Cliff

[Auctionwally]

Wow! That's some great news, it's like a lost treasure being found! Good luck with the offer, let me know if you get them.