The title of this post is not meant to convey an air of mystery to the visitor to this website but is intended to indicate that, although the deck I am about to describe may be a new discovery to playing card collectors given that it is not listed in the Hochman/Dawson encyclopedia, it is already known to tobacco card collectors by the reference C161 in the World Tobacco Index.
The deck in question is a set of 52 tobacco insert playing cards issued by D. Ritchie & Co. that is completely different from either of the two known listings in Hochman (ICA10 & ICA10a). Perhaps, this set may merit inclusion in that reference as the future ICA11. I do not know when these cards were issued but it seems likely that the circa 1888 date attributed to the ICA10a listing would also be applicable here. At any rate, it is definitely prior to the company being acquired by The American Tobacco Company in 1895. I will also state the obvious here, namely, this is a very rare set, more so than the already acknowledged rarity of the two known decks.
Unlike the two known decks from this issuer, these cards do not feature beauties but, instead, advertise several of the company's brands by featuring one or two of them on each card. With the exception of the wonderfully designed Ace of Spades, which features a reversible design of 3 different packages of tobacco (Athlete, Prince, Romeo) surrounding the central pip which features a package of their most famous brand, Derby, all of the pip cards are essentially standard except for the brand promotions on each. The outstanding feature of this set, though, which raises it nearly to the level of creativity displayed on the famous Murphy Varnish advertising deck, in my opinion, is the clever and completely original non-standard court cards. Each spade, diamond and club court advertise a different brand, although I lack the KC in my incomplete set to absolutely confirm this, whereas the 3 heart courts all advertise Romeo Cigarettes with the Jack appearing as Romeo in a variation of the balcony scene from the WIlliam Shakespeare play and, presumably, the Queen is meant to be Juliet. The Jack of Diamonds cleverly appears as a jockey in order to advertise their Derby Long Cut Tobacco brand. The last noteworthy observation concerning these cards is that nearly all of the card backs are different from one another, each one displaying a poem or quotation, several of which pertain to tobacco. The one slight similarity to ICA10 & ICA10a is that these card backs also feature the company's trademark jockey cap symbol.
Pictured below, across 2 separate posts, are 11 of the 12 court cards and all 10 of the spade pips together with their backs so that the viewer can get an idea of the imagination and ingenuity that went into the design of these cards.
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