Coffee Cards??

[Tom Murphy]

I wish I spoke French. I also wish I knew more about "Coffee Cards".

Perhaps our Network creator, Mike Ferguson, can give us a little background on just what Coffee Cards are, where they were popular, collect-ability etc.

This site - http://bibigreycat.blogspot.com/ - seems to have a vast collection of these cards.. but very little information about them - and what there is, is all in French.

They look very interesting, and (s)he certainly has a wonderful collection, but unfortunately has not told us much about the cards, the collection.. or for that matter, anything at all.

Anyone care to weigh-in?

Tom

[Mike Ferguson]

Sorry for the delayed response. I can't say I know a great deal about the coffee trading cards. I have a small collection of Arbuckles cards and few from Lion coffee. Because these were designed to be collected, they are generally plentiful for brands that were popular turn of century. Arbuckles and Lion were fierce competitors at that time, especially in the west. This was also a time when coffee came to be viewed as a commodity by consumers, like sugar, one is as good as another or interchangeable. In this environment, coffee companies competed with variables other than quality, such as, price, packaging methods--although consumers thought of coffee as a commodity, they still understood the coffee in the context of freshness, much more so than today's consumer--and trading cards.

If anyone ever comes across a trading card for Gillies Coffee, I would be interested in that.