The American cards

Back in the 50s, gum cards were a popular item. While we have "sports" and "non-sport" collectors today, back then the cards were simply called gum cards, and for a very good reason. They came with a slab of gum, which, as I recall, was never particularly tasty. The main reason for plunking down 5 or 10 cents was for the cards.

Baseball cards were probably the biggest draw then and now, but there were plenty of other subjects to chose from. One of my favorite sets is the Zorro set of 88 cards. Taken from color photos of the first 13 episodes, the cards were published by Topps, one of the major card companies at the time.

Each card featured a photo on the front, with a brief description on the back. Unlike many other sets, the photos and text actually match each other, and the text is accurate. All-in-all, this is a great collectible for fans of the Disney version of Zorro. The set has become quite valuable in recent years, and collectors can expect to pay several hundred dollars for a set in good condition.

Each pack of cards came packaged in a waxed paper wrapper.

---

The fronts of the cards used color pictures from the show.

---

The rears of the cards described the scene on the other side.

---

The cards were shipped to retailers in this case. With no real reason to save one of these boxes in the years before there was serious interest in collecting memorabilia from the show most were discarded, making them very rare today.

---

When I was collecting my set of Zorro cards, I was surprised when one of them arrived in the mail. Instead of the bright colors of the cards I already had, this one looked more like a colorized version of a black-and-white photo. Another change was the lack of a title on the front, for there was only a logo in the corner. The biggest difference, though, was on the rear, for the text was printed in both English and French.

This one card led me on a search for the rest of the set, a task made more complicated by the fact that no one else seemed to know about these cards, and thus couldn't tell me how many cards were in the set. I eventually learned that there were from a company named Parkhurst, and that there are 50 of them in the set.

When I finally assembled a complete set, I found another difference between the American and Canadian sets. Many of the photos were cropped differently, such as this example below. The American card is on the left. These two cards, by the way, shared the same title, but the text was different, as can be seen below. In most cases, the same photo has completely different titles and text.

Monty Gum TV-Hits cards

Zorro was one of several series featured in these American cards from the 1960's. The others were Robin Hood, Daktari, Flipper, and Kung Fu. There were 100 cards in the set, with the Zorro cards being numbers 83-100. The cards are small, a bit less than 2x2.75 inches, and have blank cardboard backs without any printing. There is no pattern to the order of the cards, but they are from the Monastario episodes.

The Belgian cards

I found these three cards on eBay. I don't have any information yet as to the number of cards in the set. If you have any information please let me know.