Souvenir cards

On the same centennial theme, 2015 also marks the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, held in San Diego. This event was overshadowed by the larger world's fair further north, but at the time the BEP produced a set of souvenir cards for each one. One card in particular, depicting the battleship U.S.S. San Diego, would make an excellent choice for an intaglio print. In addition, marketing could raise visibility by sharing the story of the printing plate's disappearance following the fair, only to resurface on eBay in 2005. This story may be well known in the Bureau, but few collectors have heard about this mystery and news sources would find it irresistible. SANDICAL, held in San Diego each January, is one of the largest stamp shows in California and would be a perfect venue for a rollout. The APS AmeriStamp Expo, set for February 2015 in Riverside, CA could work well, also.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

To serve the numismatic community, which now represents the bulk of BEP's intaglio print purchasers, I would suggest a return to historic paper money reprints. Collectors never received much explanation as to why the Bureau stopped these reprints, but I assure you they are missed. I believe the BEP could reprint the reverse of several notes, if plates still exist, which would sell very well. The theme would be coins on currency.

Only three issues of federal banknotes depict coins, all on the backs of notes. The 1865 $20 gold certificate shows a $20 gold piece -- this was partially depicted on a Long Beach '85 souvenir card, but not in intaglio. The National Gold Bank Notes of the 1870s feature a collage of gold coins on their backs, and are highly sought after among U.S. paper money collectors. A reprint would be the only way most could ever obtain an example. Lastly, the 1886 $5 Silver Certificate shows both the face and reverse of a Morgan silver dollar. This was featured previously on a BEP souvenir card in 1981 which remains very popular on the secondary market. Enough time has elapsed that it could be successfully released again as an intaglio print.

Should the Bureau remain hesitant about reprinting historic banknotes, the engraved images of just the coins themselves would be very popular. They could be easily cropped and arranged on a single card or released as three separate intaglio prints, with additional images.

 

I also provided a personal observation: the design of the intaglio prints in the past few years has trended toward ornate framing, which draws focus away from the intaglio engraving that the print is meant to feature. Going back to a simpler format would better serve the original engravings. Bureau engravers produced many elegant frames and ornaments that could be used if the designer so chooses, but keeping the print primarily intaglio -- frame, vignettes and perhaps even lettering -- would be my preference.

What have you to add, forum members?

 

I prefer the focus to be on the original vignette and that they avoid gratuitous design flourishes. The addition of colors and other graphics only makes the sheet look more busy and the design choked. In recent years you notice that art and design has taken on heavy graphic line treatments, overprints and intricate lace-like additions to everything in fashion, art, illustration, computer graphics in TV commercials, movies, animation, etc. It seems the trend is that if you don't add it it's not attractive enough. In the past T-shirts were simply printed front, back and maybe a sleeve, now they are printed in every position, over-printed, decorated to the hilt. Tattoos and so-called "body-art" are the same excess of decoration to an already elegant design, the natural human form. Apply too many tats to your skin and just like mixing all the colors in the rainbow you get mud. This, by the way, I don't express as a matter of subjectivity. Personal aesthetics are just that, personal and up to the individual. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Entire schools of design once emerged at the end of the 19th century to wipe away excessive gilt and baroque like decorative design, but in terms of these intaglio vignettes, already deeply thought out and intricate, to add modern flourishes and color around them is often to put the pig in the pearl necklace.

Permit this further aside... There is a current world-wide trend amongst art museum installation design and curation in which we find these institutions altering the once static white walls of the galleries to color coded zones of a given exhibition or paired with themes in the paintings put on display. I recently saw a group of beach, ocean and river scenes in French Impressionist paintings that were all grouped together in one room and placed on blue walls... you know, because water is blue! It was so absurd! The next room was purple and dealt with nudes, another orange, another yellow and each fit someone's idea of segregating concepts by a singular idea of what color meant, out of time, out of place, across another culture. It was such a waste to try to look at paintings booming with color because the surrounding walls glow in dim galleries influencing the viewers eye and what you see in the original master paintings. This is not something being done by just some no-name museum, but by the leading institutions of art. White walls may be boring but what they are not is intrusive to the pictures themselves.

So this is my thinking and my feelings about overly decorative Souvenir cards, which seem to be riding the same wave of trend in applying designs to any open space it can be fit into, whether it helps the sheet or not.

 

I love the complexity of the geometric lathe-work. One of my favorite notes is the 1890 $50 Treasury Note, only available as a reprint since the plates never officially went to press.




Here's a great video, showing how the engraving equipment works.

 

Very nice, Funkee! Great video find.

 

I love that video and have shared it with a number of fellow collectors.

Chris, I would fall into your camp, in terms of design. But it's all cyclical. A century ago architect Adolph Loos coined the phrase "ornament is a crime" in a backlash to all the gingerbread, art nouveau styles in vogue at the time -- and Modernism was born, which went in the extreme opposite direction. Design shifted to the minimal, streamline style. Now we're back to "more is better."

My opinion is that engraving used in banknotes *had* to be ornamental to deter counterfeiting, and the engravers and designers elevated that function to art. It doesn't need any additional help from present day designers to somehow improve it.

 

I know of, have read and studied Loos and of other key designers, philosophies and schools of European (Western) modernism, most of which was very politically motivated and objected to a certain visual aesthetic attached to certain social classes, to the point modern design became as much about protest and change as it was about identity and expression which often sought to break down things to their simplest forms and functions and to strip away the things which clouded it. It's unfortunate that a lot of modern designers have this knowledge of art and design history yet when tasked with producing products like these Souvenir Cards are at the command of people less informed telling them how to point and click their mouse until they have some decorative card some marketing scheme thinks is best for the demographic they seek a profit from.

I too applaud the clever and inventive skills that went into "embedding" security in ornamental banknote design of the past and it's one of the things I think about in modern banknote design where heavy applications of blue woven security ribbons and such features are bluntly added to notes with apparently less sophistication. But I don't think it's the visual aspect that matters at all in security issues anymore. Collectors (often) respond negatively to modern banknotes and overlook the sophistication technology has provided. That is where design lies, in the things we can't see or appreciate on the superficial level that was once the only technology available and so more simply (on the surface, but with great skill) incorporated into the design. As technology changed we lost the ornamental which became superfluous, but have taken on more "armor" to deflect fraud. It may not look elegant but I think there is an elegance in tech that we don't naturally emotively respond to. Some people ooh and ahh over Medieval body armor but object to what is seen in the field of battle today, but it's a similar situation where technology ceaselessly has had to change to address the issues of the day.

Any of this discussion has to carefully consider that this discourse is aside from that of anyone's personal preferences and individual aesthetics, and remember that we are trying to address something more focused on how someone thought and implemented design decisions based on a business and marketing point of view. Souvenir cards for many, many years have been simple reproductions with a little information and perhaps canceled with postage stamps. But in today's hyperactive drive to market everything to death and to do so at the possible distraction of the intended product, I think the only cycle is that of marketing bulldozing over every possible product and in every corner of collecting hobbies. Were they merely responding to counterfeited Souvenir cards, I would be less scrutinizing but still find the end result too heavily applied. However, I don't think these overly decorated Souvenir cards of late have been designed in this way for that reason.

FWIW, As much as I have liked some of the recent years' cards vignettes, I simply haven't bought any of them for precisely these heavily decorated features they now bear.

It's an interesting point you brought up, because it was something I have had thoughts about before but never shared till now. Sorry if it was boring to read.

 

SOMEBODY BUY THIS NOW -
http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Souveni...9-/371135019840?&_trksid=p2056016.m2518.l4276

This is THE premier souvenir card catalog and you almost never see it offered for sale anywhere. This is an original printing and it's a good price. I have a very dog-eared copy in my own library that I reference all the time.

 

OMG! Thank you for such an awesome find and recommendation. I got this copy. Thanks to you, I'll be able to gain a better understanding of the range of cards that are out there. Till now, I often wondered how vast, how many cards there were and how the cards were numbered but with nothing else to go by. When I have bought cards, they were just based on finding things listed on eBay and buying whatever piqued my interests. I look forward to this catalog and a deeper review. I'm indebted to your heads-up. Many thanks!

 

Wow, congrats Chris. If you guys see another please let me know.

 

I'll be on the lookout for you, Darryl. This catalog only goes to 1989; there was another supplement in 1991. The prices listed have dropped significantly by today's standards, but there's a wealth of information on all categories of cards, particularly forerunners.

 

The eBay book has no images. But there are 2 more copies available on Amazon for $59. So the $28 price on eBay isn't bad.

There was another more up to date copy printed in 2008.

http://www.numismaticnews.net/article/society_publishes_souvenir_card_catalog

Cost appears to be $18 shipped to non-members.

 

I do wish there was an online project with the cataloging system and at least reference thumbnails of the cards, sort of the way Scripophily has for stock certificates. But it's good to add to your books until such time.

 

Funkee, that 2008 publication is actually a "Visual Reference" and has little information apart from pictures - which are way too small and often badly cropped. It does work as a quick reference, but it's nothing like the original catalog.

Chris, I share your wish for an online catalog. I used Robert Bailey's website for this purpose until he went out of business and took it down. Ken Barr has a site, but it's a bit haphazard and he doesn't keep it very current. I think the SCCS would be willing to sponsor something like an online database for souvenir cards, but there's a major lack of technical expertise among the membership. At 50+ I'm probably the youngest member of the group by well over a decade, and I don't feel up to the task by myself. Right now there's one guy in his 70s, who is holding things together as president, treasurer and newsletter editor. If he ever decides to step down I doubt the society will continue. :-(

 

I just got off a conference call with BEP representatives and members of the souvenir card community. They definitely plan to reprint the battleship Hatch eagle (I'll repost an image of that later), and components from the 1915 award certificate. Possibly a reprint of the entire large size award cert, as a hand-pulled proof at a show. The size reduces its appeal to typical collectors, plus it would be more expensive.

The BEP also plans to produce an MPC series similar to this year's 5-card military series, that would be available on a permanent basis, like their visit

 

...Visitor Center card. They will probably change the MPCs f

 

<My phone was misbehaving during that post.> Anyway, the MPCs and the color schemes would likely be changed to avoid confusion with the 2014 cards.

Here is an image of the "Hatch eagle," so-called because it was engraved by Lorenzo Hatch and became well-known on souvenir cards and handkerchiefs at many World's Fairs in the early 20th century. It later became the model for the back of the 1918 $1 FRN.

I believe the battleship would just be a direct reprint of the U.S.S. San Diego posted earlier. They also mentioned embellishing these with the porthole portraits (Columbus and Balboa) and the cherubs on dolphins from the award certificate. Stay tuned!

 

Forgot to mention: They will also incorporate the four 1915 Panama-Pacific postage stamps, probably printed in a single color. This should increase appeal for stamp collectors.

 

I posted a survey of sorts in a separate thread, regarding the 2015 intaglio print program -- The BEP wants to know.... But I wanted to add confirmation of the BEP's Armed Forces cards. They are definitely going to modify this year's intaglio prints that depict Military Payment Certificates. The same five military service branches will be featured but the MPC used on the 2014 cards will be flopped to show their backs. The one exception is the Air Force card, which will show the B-52 on the back of the Series 681 $20. At the top instead of "2014" it will give the year the service branch was established. These prints will remain on sale as a permanent BEP product.