Collectibles: Tom Tyler on Biblioteca Films card

Biblioteca Films, the popular Spanish-language film booklet series published by in Barcelona, Spain, also manufactured a set of collector cards bearing many Hollywood stars as well as European stars. It is unknown if these cards were distributed along with a film booklet, as in the way the British Boy’s Cinema cards were done so, or if these were made available separately for collectors of film memorabilia.

Each Biblioteca Films card is 3 3/4” x 5 3/4” in size, about the size of a postcard, but of paper-thin quality. Some of the cards in the series had an ornate border surrounding the star’s face, while others, like the Tom Tyler card, had plain, straight-edged borders. The backs were blank. Each card was monochrome in color; however, there were at least four different colors issued, with only one star per color. For example, the Tom Tyler card is antique brown in color, while the card for Aileen Pringle is red. The other two colors were black/white, and sienna. There were at least 600 cards in the series, distributed over the 1920’s and 1930’s, into the 1940’s. Each card bore the number at the upper right corner and the star’s name below the image. The number on the Tom Tyler card is 166.

Other stars who appeared on the Biblioteca Films cards are: Virginia Valli, Al Jolson, Katherine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks, Constance Talmadge, and Roy D'Arcy.