The rarest of the rare — here’s a 1950 Royal Pudding salesman’s booklet. It’s the only example I’ve ever seen and was available in an April 2003 auction catalog.

This is an accordion-style booklet containing 11 highly desirable trading cards produced by Royal Desserts during the early 1950’s. The “Royal Pudding” cards (listed as F219 in the American Card Catalog) are super-scarce in their own right. Veteran collectors consider themselves lucky whenever they find a single example from the series, most often at the National Convention or similar large venue. Due to their method of distribution as box panels, the cards are usually in rough shape when they do surface. They’re all tough, and every item in the set is a “key.” The offered mini-collection is even rarer than an assembly of high-grade singles. Carried outside the company only by sales representatives, a few booklets like this one were presented to favored contacts. When folded, the 4-1/4″ × 5″ booklet’s cover only hints at the remarkable contents: “23 New Stars to Help You Crown Your Royal Sales.” Opening the small volume reveals a gallery of nearly perfect Royals, including numbers 1-14 and 16 picturing baseball subjects and 1-6 depicting film stars. (The actual cards total 21 by our count, but the company must have felt its gelatin spoon and batting tips offers, also featured on the booklet’s pages, qualified as additional ‘stars.) Fully unfolded, a long slogan emerges above the cards to act as a display advertisement in banner form. The baseball stars included in the booklet form an amazing roster. Hall of Famers Stan Musial, Pee Wee Reese, George Kell, Warren Spahn, Phil Rizzuto and Luke Appling are among the baseball luminaries whose cards appear on leaves of this booklet. Dom DiMaggio, Andy Patko, Bobby Thomson, Ewell Blackwell and Tommy Henrich are among the other ballplayers present, and Forrest Tucker, Farley Grander, Tony Curtis, Joan Evans, Ann Blyth and Allan “Rocky” Lane represent the promotion’s movie star category. Externally, condition is a well-preserved and gently handled Excellent, and individual pages approach Mint in a number of cases. The booklet is dated “7/50,” in small print on the back cover. This is an almost never-seen item, created to promote an extraordinarily difficultspecialty issue.
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