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.

Tom Tyler, the dog, and the fence

Tom on a Ross Verlag postcard

One particular image of Tom Tyler appearing on a variety of movie cards from different manufacturers between the late 1920’s to early 1930’s depicts him standing by a fence, hands on his hips, feet crossed, with a small dog seated at his left. Few movie cards bearing this image appeared in full color, usually hand painted then reproduced for mass distribution; most of them were either in black and white or sepia tone. This particular photo of Tom dates back to 1925 when he made his second starring-role for FBO in “The Wyoming Wildcat”.

It is unknown if this particular shot of Tom Tyler appears on any ESCO arcade or exhibit cards; the image was licensed to the popular German postcard manufacturer, Ross Verlag. This company issued multiple series of both American and European film stars on these postcards between 1919 and 1944. The earliest images from the 1920’s were in sepia, with later ones dating into the 1940’s in black and white. Only selected images were hand tinted and issued that way, and this particular photo of Tom was one of them. The same image also in sepia appeared on three different German tobacco cards from the following manufacturers: Mercedes A. Batschari, Manoli Gold, Hansom Jasmatzi. Smaller movie cards licensed the same image, and it was not long before these cards became popular collectibles among young patrons of Tom’s silent films. It is worth pointing out that most of these movie cards seem to have originated in Europe, although 8” x 10” stills of Tom in this pose have come from The United States.

Tom Tyler on a Dutch gum card

As a marketing tool for “The Wyoming Wildcat” and Tom Tyler in general, the image of him standing against that fence with the dog, whose name is Beans and considered one of Tom’s pals along with Frankie Darro, popped up from time to time over the decades in books on early Hollywood, ephemera shows, and the rare batch of movie cards or stills at an antique shop. This image of Tom Tyler certainly remains one of the most popular from his silent film years, and in movie card format, desirable to be sought after.

Collectibles: Tom Tyler on Sociedad de Ciegos la Hispalense Artistas de Cine movie card

In the field of movie card collecting, one of the more rare – and unusual – European sets are the “Sociedad de Ciegos la Hispalense” which came from Spain. Small in size at 1 3/8” x 1 3/4”, these coupons were manufactured by the Seville Society for the Blind, a direct translation of its Spanish title. Not much information on this particular movie card set exists, although it is known that they were created between 1934 and 1935 in at least seven different series. Each movie star image was in brown and white, while the reverse bore “Artistas de Cine” at the top,  the Series in the upper left corner, and number in the series at the upper right corner.  A simple sketch in the center of the coupon contained a rectangle where a number could be ink-stamped. Resembling a stamp with its serrated edges, the coupon bears an image of Tom Tyler from the 1932 Universal serial “Jungle Mystery”. This particular coupon of Tom has the date of February 1935 on the reverse.

Other stars who appeared on these movie star cards include: Herbert Marshall, Buck Jones, Paul Lukas, Claudette Colbert, Harold Lloyd, Kent Taylor, Virginia Bruce, and Jeanette MacDonald. Sociedad de Ciegos la Hispalense also issued a set of coupons bearing images of famous soccer players in 1935-36 but in blue and white, of the same size and overall design. An album was issued for collectors to store the small movie card coupons in.

Collectibles: Tom Tyler on the R423 movie cards

 When it comes to collecting small movie cards, the ones manufactured by Cloetta (1 1/8” x 2") and De Beukelaer (1 1/16” x 2") can certainly be counted among them. Yet there is one even smaller in size, smaller than one inch, tiny yet highly collectible. Known as the R423 strip cards, these were printed in a series of 13 different cards on a single strip, issued with bubblegum starting in 1950.  Measuring 5/8" x 7/8" in size, baseball players as well as actors were issued in these small accordion strips of collectible paper. For the baseball players, each card was numbered, a total of 120 different cards printed, while the total number for the actors is unknown, but well over 84 for the black and white cards, and over 34 for the color cards. 

The backs of the black and white cards were orange in color and bear a silhouette of a seated man operating a film projector, while the color cards depict the same against a purple background. The color cards ones are of different portraits of the actor compared to the black and white one, as can be seen from the ones with Tom Tyler.

Other actors who appear on the R423 movie cards include: Charles Starrett, Red Skelton, Rita Hayworth, Jane Russell, and Desi Arnaz.

Collectibles: Tom Tyler on the R-94 Movie Scenes cards - Part 1

One of the most sought after movie card collectibles are those belonging to the R-94 Movie Scenes.  It could be that these are rare, especially those being Tom Tyler on the front of these cards, much like the United Postal Card Supply Company arcade cards, which makes them highly collectible. The R-94 cards were manufactured in two different sets, each set being two slightly different sizes. According to “The American Card Catalog: The Standard Guide on All Collected Cards and Their Values” edited by J P Burdick et al, the R-94 cards were thought to have been originally distributed with either gum or candy (cards with an R designation were included with one or the other edible product; cards bearing a W indicated being one of a set of strip cards). These cards are blank backed, the left and right edges serrated, a common depiction of strip cards, or a series of cards sold from a single strip.

The first set of R-94 strip cards, or R-94-1, measure 3" x 2 3/8”in size and came in the following colors, with one film scene often appearing in multiple monochrome colors: red, green, brown, blue, and purple. Not all R-94-1 cards are of film scenes, however; some of them were of solo shots of Hollywood stars, such as Thelma Todd and Milton Sills. It is this set which produced a series of card scenes from “Terror Mountain” (1928) with Tom in each scene.

The R-94 cards were most likely distributed as early as 1929.

Collectibles: Tom Tyler on the R96-3 movie card

One of the rarer Tom Tyler collectible color movie cards is from the R96-3 set, issued around 1938 or 1939. These cards were originally issued as panels or sheets measuring 6" x 8" containing six different stars in two rows of three, often with a film genre for each panel. For the R96-3 panel that contains a full-color photo of Tom Tyler as Sundown Saunders from “Powdersmoke Range” (1935), the theme is western stars. There are a minimum of seventeen known different panels of Hollywood stars on them. When cut from the panels, each card measures 2 ½” x 3 1/8” in size. The backs of the cards are blank with no identifying manufacturer. At least 64 cards in the set were issued, and some of the cards printed appear on more than one panel, or as duplicates in the set. Other Hollywood star who appeared in the R96-3 series include William Boyd, Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones, Dean Jagger, and Sally Payne.

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.

Collectibles: Tom Tyler on the United Postal Card Supply Co. arcade cards

One of the lesser-known arcade card manufacturers was United Postal Card Supply Company (UPCSC). United Postal Card Supply Company was a competitor of the Chicago Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO) but managed to differentiate their arcade cards in a few ways. One, while their cards were in monochrome, many of the famous figures who appeared on these cards – from famous western actors like Tom Mix, Fred Thomson, Rex Bell, Ken Maynard, Buzzy Barton to baseball players – were often portrayed as cutouts from their original background, usually a still or movie poster. There are at least two arcade cards Tom Tyler appears on: one is from “The Cowboy Musketeer” (1926), the other one, from “Idaho Red” (1929). Each card measures 3 3/8 x 5 3/8" in size (slightly larger than the ESCO arcade cards), has a seafoam green background, with the darker blue reserved for the card image.

Unfortunately, not much is known about United Postal Card Supply Company nor when it was in operation. The arcade cards this company manufactured remain very rare.

"The Cowboy Musketeer" UPCSC arcade card

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.