These Kashin Movie Stars continue to fascinate me. I’ve long had my suspicions about larger 5″ X 7″ cards with matching poses that I’ve seen here and there. Those suspicions are now burning after acquiring a large (50+) card lot of the 5″ X 7″ cards in which every single one matches the pose included in the four boxed sets of smaller Kashin cards.
Alice White
They match right down to the signatures as shown above. More samples below.
The smaller standard cards were definitely issued by Kashin Publications as they were sold in boxes bearing the name of that company. Kashin Publications issued four boxed sets of 24 cards each. Each card measured approximately 3-3/8″ X 4-1/2″. The four boxes were color coded with Kashin offering boxes in Orange, Blue, Coral, and Canary.
Adding to the intrigue on the standard Kashin boxed sets are the variations we discovered last year. A past customer and collector brought variations in pose to my attention. We also discovered that the Orange box alternatively contains either a Harold Lloyd or Ruth Patterson card, or at least the checklist does. More on those discoveries HERE.
Kashin also issued a far better known baseball series of cards in 1929. These Baseball Cards were the same size and issued the same way as the Movie Star sets we discuss here. The baseball set carries American Card Catalog (ACC) designation R316.
That baseball set becomes more interesting and relevant to this post when it’s known that the following year, 1930, an 18 card set of giant 5″ X 7″ baseball cards was issued which featured the same poses from the smaller R316 Kashin set. These large cards carry the ACC designation W554.
Our Kashin Movie Star cards were also catalogued by Burdick in his American Card Catalog
Nils Asther
The American Card Catalog does not provide the most detailed listings but the W618 listing is very close in size to our cards at 3-1/4″ X 4-1/4″ and more definitively carries the notation (Kashin) in parenthesis. Outside the parenthesis the company “Brody” is named, but I find no reference to that on the number of Kashin Motion Picture Boxes that I have in my possession.
I do not see a reference to the 5×7 movie star cards in Burdick’s Catalog. They differ from the super sized baseball cards in that there are far more than 18, I have over 50 here. They are exact duplicates of the smaller Kashin cards while the baseball cards appear to have a strip of text added along the bottom border of the card.
I typically list the standard sized Movie Star cards from the boxed sets as 1929-1931 as the baseball set carries the 1929 date and the mix of stars indicates that to be an appropriate range. Especially the inclusion of Lon Chaney who died in 1930.
What I’m left wondering is:
- What is the exact date of the standard Kashin boxed issues of Movie Stars? 1929 makes the most sense.
- Who were Kashin Publications? What else did they make? (The company name leads me to believe magazines.)
- Were the large W554 baseball cards also issued by Kashin or did another company just license the poses used in the smaller (in size) R316 set.
- And springing from the previous question, were my large 5×7 movie cards issued by Kashin or again, did a random company license the images.
I’ve Googled variations of Kashin Publications and discovered only my site and a few others mentioning the movie cards along with several baseball hobby sites talking about those cards; I also did deeper Google searches inside of Books and Documents. Nothing. I’ve searched NewspaperArchive.com for old Newspaper ads or articles featuring Kashin–nothing. I’ve obviously exhausted my own hobby reference material.
If you have any ideas feel free to chime in below. Subscribers click HERE and scroll down to reach comments.
I haven’t listed them all as of this writing, but several of the Super Kashins are already up for sale on eBay, including the best of the bunch. See them in my eBay Store HERE.
Robert Montgomery
M23 Philadelphia Record Supplements Update
Speaking of items carrying an ACC designation, earlier tonight I updated my page of 1933-1938 Philadelphia Record Supplement Photos. The reason for the update, as usual, is that a bunch of these undervalued newspaper supplements just arrived. They’ll be listed on eBay by Friday evening.
The revised guide only includes one new listing–a 1938 Priscilla Lane supplement that I acquired for the first time–but it now contains updated details and over 50 images of different M23 Supplements in the Gallery.
See the new M23 Movie Star Supplement Guide and Gallery HERE.
Closing out with a few more big and small pairs of the Kashin cards that I had scanned together in anticipation of this post, enjoy:
Clara Bow
Harold Lloyd
Marion Davies
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