Cigarette cards and albums/books - help please

[Mintie]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to find out some specific details regarding the cigarette cards and albums/books that were issued in the 1930s in Germany. Were the books and the cards that were to be pasted into them available for many years after they were first published? For instance, the 'Deutschland Erwacht' album/book was first published in 1933 - would it have been the case that this would still have been available in 1941, along with the cards to go in it? (I know publication stopped in 1942 due to paper shortages.)

Thank you very much for your help.

[John G.]

I'm pretty sure the "Card/photo" series sets were printed in massive quanities (at least one complete set of series) for each album/book printed, probably more...) and would have remained "available" well into the war years.... of course, public interest would have decreased after Hitler & the Party's initial rise to power and with the war.... so stockpiles remained. I've had several unopened sets from the various books over the years... as well as the "coupons" used to order the pictures...

However... as far as specific knowledge... I really don't know... only assumptions on my part.
John G.

[Mintie]

Thanks John. Yes, the numbers printed did seem to be rather generous! Does anyone else know?

[Kuehlschrank]

There was a huge number of cigarette (also coffee, milk, chocolate, there were alot companies doing this) manufacturers, and such, of different cards and albums, with pictures to collect.
Usually the larger companies, such as Reemtsma, had new pictures and albums every year, with changing layout. Sports, travel,
and of course military topics. The large companies issued easily 1 million albums and many hundred million pictures of one series in one year,
huge and popular events such as 1936 Olympia were covered too, and pictures numbers printed reach 1 billion.

But there were also small companies, that issued only a few thousand albums and did not change the layout every year.
Some went bancrupt during the times, others closed their album issues and stopped the printing of new pictures.
So there are very rare albums, with only a few hundred printed issues, basically unable to complete, cause the last pictures never were printed and released,
and there are also very common albums, made by large companies that sold millions and millions of a single issue,
and if the issue was not too popular, im sure it was sold as long as prints were aviable and someone bought it,
even if newer issues were aviable already.

[Mintie]

Thanks Kuehlschrank! That's very helpful.