Allen & Ginter

An Allen & Ginter baseball card of Charles Comiskey, issued in 1887 (N28).

Allen and Ginter was the Richmond, Virginia, tobacco manufacturing firm formed by John Allen and Lewis Ginter in 1875 that created and marketed the first cigarette cards for collecting and trading. Some of the cards in the series include Charles Comiskey, Cap Anson, Jack Glasscock, and Buffalo Bill. Since 2006, a revived version of the trading card brand has been issued by Topps.

Invention of the cigarette rolling machine

The company also offered a prize for the invention of a machine able to roll cigarettes (which until then had been hand-rolled). James Albert Bonsack won this prize with his 1880/81 invention. Because it was not completely reliable, all but one of the large tobacco manufacturers declined to buy the machine. James Buchanan Duke did buy this cigarette rolling machine in 1885 and used it to great success; by 1890 he had consolidated his four major competitors, including Allen & Ginter, and formed the American Tobacco Company. The "Allen & Ginter Company" was no more, but Lewis Ginter sat on the board of the American Tobacco Company.

cigarette brands

The cigarette brands of Allen & Ginter included Richmond Gems, Virginia Brights, Perfection, Dandies and Little Beauties.

2006 Topps revival

Since 2006, Topps has issued a revival of the Allen & Ginter trading cards. These cards feature hand painted cards for current baseball players as well as quirky inserts featuring athletes in other sports and non-athletes (for example politicians like the Slovak prime minister Robert Fico).

See also

• Baseball card

Further reading

• Robert Sobel The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition (Weybright & Talley 1974), chapter 5, James Buchanan Duke: Opportunism Is the Spur ISBN 0-679-40064-8.