Collectibles: Tom Tyler on Riders of the Silver Screen movie cards

Among the collectible movie card sets manufactured within the last fifty years is Riders of the Silver Screen. Manufactured by Smokey Mountain Knife Works in Sevierville, Tennessee in 1993, each card measures 2 1/2” x 3 ½” in size, the standard baseball card size. A parade of western stars receives several cards dedicated to their most noteworthy films in the Riders of the Silver Screen Series 1 set, The front of each card contains a scene from a popular film, while the back of each card contains an interesting fact or two about the western star, including birth and death dates, place of birth, real name, and blurb about the star’s film career. Each card has a red border with a second border in the form of a film reel with the film itself forming a frame around a movie poster of some type: a film still, lobby card, half-sheet, or one sheet. While a full color palette is used, the Riders of the Silver Screen Series 1 leans to the natural colors of the southwest.

Series 1 of Riders of the Silver Screen contains six movie cards that Tom Tyler appears on and are numbered consecutively. The card numbers and film scenes are as follows:

277 – The Phantom of the West

278 – The Texas Tornado

279 – Santa Fe Bound

280 – War of the Range

281 – Lost Ranch

282 – Gauchos of El Dorado

Smokey Mountain Knife Works has been in operation since 1978 and is best known for selling pocketknives and owning a major knife showplace. The company also manufactures knives decorated with western stars as part of their “Riders of the Silver Screen” series.

Other western stars who appear on Riders of the Silver Screen Series 1 include: Monte Hale, George O’Brien, Rex Allen, and Gene Autry.

Collectibles: Tom Tyler on the Manoli Gold tobacco card

 One of the few tobacco cards bearing an image of Tom Tyler in addition to the Mercedes A. Batschari card is Manoli Gold Filmserie. Also manufactured in Germany, the Manoli Gold card is identical in appearance as the Mercedes one, with Tom standing up against a tall wood fence with a dog at his left, and sepia in color. Curiously enough, this card also bears the same number in the set as the Mercedes one, number 89. What does differ is the size of the card:  2” x 3 1/16” in size, slightly longer than the Mercedes tobacco card. 

The Manoli A.G. tobacco company of Berlin, Germany issued at least five different sets of film star tobacco cards, each set containing 168 cards. Each set of cards were of a slightly different size than the previous. Famous Hollywood and European stars appeared on these collectible movie cards. The year of issue for the set the Tom Tyler card appears in was probably 1930. As with all the Manoli Gold tobacco movie cards, albums were also issued to collectors to place their cards in, each card having its own designated spot.