The company merged with four other tobacco manufacturers to form the American Tobacco Company in 1890.[1][2] Since 2006, a revived version of the brand has been issued by Topps for a line of baseball cards.[3]
History
Tobacco manufacturing
Engraving of the Allen & Ginter warehouses in Richmond, Virginia, from an 1886 promotional bookVirginia Brights cigarette box by Allen & Ginter, c. 1888
The firm of Allen & Ginter, born around 1880, was the rebranding of John F. Allen & Company, a partnership formed about eight years earlier by John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter. When Allen retired in 1882, Ginter took on John Pope as his new partner but kept Allen's name. The first tobacco company to employ female labor, by 1886 they had 1,100 employees, predominantly girls, who rolled the cigarettes.[4]
Around 1876, the company offered a prize for the invention of a machine able to roll cigarettes (which until then had been hand-rolled).[5] In 1880, James Albert Bonsack of Virginia invented a cigarette rolling machine. 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.[6] The "Allen & Ginter Company" was no more, but Lewis Ginter sat on the board of the American Tobacco Company.
The cigarette brands of Allen & Ginter included Richmond Gems, Virginia Brights, Perfection, Dandies and Little Beauties.
In late 1880s, Allen & Ginter began to release cigarette card sets as promotional items for its cigarette brands. The most part of the collection consisted of illustrated cards, but there were a few collections of photographs. Topics varied from birds and wild animals to American Indian chiefs or flags of the world. Allen & Ginter's baseball cards were the first of the tobacco era baseball cards ever produced for distribution on a national level.[7] The most popular and highly sought after of these sets is the N28 and N29 "World's Champions" series, released in 1887.[3]
Allen & Ginter cards began to feature hand-painted cards of current baseball players as well as various insert sets featuring standout athletes in other sports, pop culture icons, and historical figures ranging from Wee-Man to Davy Crockett and everything in between.
From 2006 to 2009, artist Dick Perez was commissioned to hand paint special one of one insert cards in the style of Allen & Ginter. Perez created 30 art cards each of those years featuring the prominent stars of the game.[8]
As of 2012 the Allen & Ginter series remains one of Topps' most popular, highest selling brands in their product lineup.
The best known of the Allen & Ginter insert sets however, are the DNA Hair Relic cards. These highly lauded cards feature strands of hair from famous historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, King George III, George Washington and many others.[9]
Another popular feature of the Allen & Ginter product is the Rip Card. Invented by hobby shop owner and Topps consultant Alan Narz,[10] Rip Cards have been a part of every Allen & Ginter product since 2006. These cards allow collectors to keep the card intact or to rip the outer card to reveal an exclusive mini card available only inside of a Rip Card. These mini cards may be short prints, autographs, or cards made from metal or wood. Beginning in 2013, Topps began including a Double Rip Card, which had two inner cavities with mini cards inside. In 2019, Topps introduced a jumbo Box Topper Rip Card, with 3 mini cards inside.
Trading cards series
There were various cigarette card sets released as promotional items for these products. The most popular and highly sought after of these sets is the N28 and N29 "World's Champions" series, released in 1887.[3]
Some of the series released were (all illustrations, except where noted):
A25: World's Inventors
N1: American Editors
N2: American Indian Chiefs
N3: Arms of All Nations
N4: Birds of America
N5: Birds of the Tropics
N6: City Flags
N8: 50 Fish From American Waters
N9: Flags of All Nations
N10: Flags of All Nations 2
N11: Flags of the States and Territories
N12: Fruits
N13: Game birds
N14: General Government and State Capitol Buildings
Enstad, Nan. Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism. University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Robert SobelThe Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition (Weybright & Talley 1974), chapter 5, James Buchanan Duke: Opportunism Is the SpurISBN0-679-40064-8.
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