Allen and Ginter was the Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

, tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

 manufacturing firm formed by John Allen

John Allen

-Politicians:*John Allen , U.S. Representative from Connecticut*John B. Allen , first U.S. Senator from Washington*John Clayton Allen , U.S. Representative from Illinois...

 and Lewis Ginter

Lewis Ginter

Major Lewis Ginter was a prominent businessman, army officer, and philanthropist in Richmond, VirginiaOf Dutch ancestry, he was born Lewis Guenther in New York City, New York, and moved to Richmond, Virginia, in 1842. Ginter had a number of careers, arguably making and losing a fortune three times...

 in 1875 that created and marketed the first cigarette card

Cigarette card

Cigarette cards are trade cards issued by tobacco manufacturers to stiffen cigarette packaging and advertise cigarette brands.-History:Beginning in 1875, cards depicting actresses, baseball players, Indian chiefs, and boxers were issued by the US-based Allen and Ginter tobacco company. These are...

s for collecting and trading. Some of the cards in the series include Charles Comiskey

Charles Comiskey

Charles Albert "The Old Roman" Comiskey was a Major League Baseball player, manager and team owner. He was a key person in the formation of the American League and later owned the Chicago White Sox...

, Cap Anson

Cap Anson

Adrian Constantine Anson , nicknamed "Cap" and "Pop", was a National Association and Major League Baseball first baseman...

, Jack Glasscock

Jack Glasscock

John Wesley "Jack" Glasscock was an American shortstop in Major League Baseball who played for several teams from 1879 to 1895 and was the top player at his position in the 1880s during the sport's bare-handed era...

, and Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody was a United States soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory , in LeClaire but lived several years in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill received the Medal of Honor in 1872 for service to the US...

. Since 2006, a revived version of the trading card brand has been issued by Topps

Topps

The Topps Company, Inc., manufactures chewing gum, candy and collectibles. Based in New York, New York, Topps is best known as a leading producer of baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards, hockey cards and other sports and non-sports themed trading cards.-Company history:Topps itself was...

.

Invention of the cigarette rolling machine

The company also offered a prize for the invention of a machine able to roll cigarettes (which until then had been hand-rolled). James Albert Bonsack

James Albert Bonsack

James Albert Bonsack invented in 1880 the first cigarette rolling machine....

 won this prize with his 1880/81 invention. Because it was not completely reliable, all but one of the large tobacco manufacturers declined to buy the machine. James Buchanan Duke

James Buchanan Duke

James Buchanan Duke was a U.S. tobacco and electric power industrialist best known for his involvement with Duke University.-Personal life:...

 did buy this cigarette rolling machine in 1885 and used it to great success; by 1890 he had consolidated his four major competitors, including Allen & Ginter, and formed the American Tobacco Company

American Tobacco Company

The American Tobacco Company was a tobacco company founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke through a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter and Goodwin & Company...

. The "Allen & Ginter Company" was no more, but Lewis Ginter sat on the board of the American Tobacco Company.

cigarette brands

The cigarette brands of Allen & Ginter included Richmond Gems, Virginia Brights, Perfection, Dandies and Little Beauties.

2006 Topps revival

Since 2006, Topps has issued a revival of the Allen & Ginter trading cards. These cards feature hand painted cards for current baseball players as well as quirky inserts featuring athletes in other sports and non-athletes (for example politicians like the Slovak

Slovakia

The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

 prime minister Robert Fico

Robert Fico

Robert Fico served as the Prime Minister of Slovakia from July 4, 2006 to July 8, 2010.He is the leader of the left-wing party Direction – Social Democracy . The party won the parliamentary elections in 2006, receiving approximately 30 percent of the cast votes...

).

Further reading

• Robert Sobel
  Robert Sobel
  Robert Sobel was an American professor of history at Hofstra University, and a well-known and prolific writer of business histories.- Biography :...
  
  The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition (Weybright & Talley 1974), chapter 5, James Buchanan Duke: Opportunism Is the Spur ISBN 0-679-40064-8.