Today, I thought I would introduce 3 different types of Trading Cards from Houdini’s day:

1. The Ogden’s Guinea Gold Card from New Series 1 No. B342
2. Card 4 from the set of Boy’s Cinema Famous Heroes
3. A set of cards by Hoyo De Monterrey of Havana

Each of these cards was mentioned in a Houdini article found in the Cartophilic Notes & News publication vol 29 no 5:

HHCE Collection

The Ogden’s cigarette card is his rookie card and is identified as 1902 but that date is not correct. That photo used on the card wasn’t taken until 1904. The set first came out in 1902, but the B series with Houdini came out later. Ogden Guinea Gold Cards ran from 1902 to 1907. And thanks to Kevin Connolly, we know there are two variations of this card, the one variation is with a whitish box with “HOUDINI THE HANDCUFF KING” inside the box. The other variation “HOUDINI THE HANDCUFF KING” is in the beige field without the box.”

The set of 24 Famous Heroes cards came out in the Weekly Boys Cinema Magazine, with the first card (No. 1) being inserted in the Boys Cinema Issue No. 117, Vol. 5 March 4, 1922. Each week, they issued another card.

HHCE Collection

The Harry Houdini card (No. 4) came out in Boys Cinema issue No. 120, Vol 5 March 25, 1922.

HHCE Collection

An extremely rare set of 25 Hoyo De Monterrey of Havanna Tobacco Cards (No. 57-81) circa 1920, depicting stills from his Terror Island movie. The card (No. 60) below, sold November 15 2019 on eBay for $247.02.

I have been able to identify 22 of the 25 cards and will be sharing images from my personal collection at later dates:

• Terror Island Trade Cards – No. 57-61
• Terror Island Trade Cards – No. 62-66
• Terror Island Trade Cards – No. 67-71
• Terror Island Trade Cards – No. 72-76
• Terror Island Trade Cards – No. 77-81