I’ve collected vintage women’s sports cards since the early 1990s and I'm fascinated when I find a card that I’ve never seen before. Because my specialty is not the normal sports card collection, I’ve created my own nomenclature of what makes a rare card. “Common cards” are ones that are often found for sale. “Rare cards” are those that I know of but are rarely for sale. And then there’s the holy grail of cards, the “OMG rare” category. The Allers cards fall into this category. Let me explain why.
The Allers booklet was offered by a seller in Germany but he shared few images, and only one of a woman. I researched Allers and was not able to find anything close to the item for sale. I searched PSA's data base (Professional Sports Authenticator), an extensive track and field card online listing of cards, and Pre War Cards, a highly respected historian of pre-WWII era, all to no avail. The seller did not respond when I asked if other women were included. I took the gamble, shelled out the Euros and waited for it to arrive. When I finally had the passport sized booklet in my hands, I gently opened the fragile pages, not sure what I was going to find. As soon as I saw the pictures that had been pasted into this booklet, and hidden for 89 years, I knew these were in the “OMG rare” category.
The booklet was published in 1935 by the Allers journal, a Swedish magazine sold to adults. After a friend translated the text, I knew this was used as a redemption offer.
The primary purpose of including free trading cards with a product in the first half of the 20th century was to sell more product. Trading cards were highly collectible and the main way to acquire more cards was to buy more product. Some companies created redemption offers where the collector received a prize if “x” number of cards were returned. The collector received a prize and the company increased sales. Win-win. In the case of the Allers offer, if the person sent back a complete booklet of cards, they could choose from two prizes, and one prize if it was just the booklet.
1. A nice booklet with dollhouses, doll furniture, animals, dolls and many other toys for the girls.
2. The book, Her Lucky Day, by a known author
3. A booklet of winter sports
4. Water sport sketches
5. Drawings/plans to make electrical machines for handy people
6. Tasty recipe book
7. Drawings of patterns for clothing and handcraft items
8. Sketches and plans to build a cabin
9. Drawings and sketches of playwrights and comedies
For the grand prize, one winner was selected for an all-expense paid trip to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. When redemption offers required trading cards, the cards were often destroyed upon receipt, which makes having a complete booklet a rare find. This booklet is also unique because it used photographs that aren’t commonly seen. Trading card companies often shared images because pictures were not as easy to come by as they are today. All the athletes pictured were medalists from the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, California.
Below are the women that were included, along with a little about their athletic accomplishments.
Dorothy Poynton, USA
Dorothy Poynton was an American Olympic diver who medaled in three Olympic Games (1928, 1932 and later in 1936). She was barely 14 years old when she won the silver medal in the 3m springboard at the 1928 Games. In 1932 and 1936 she took home the gold in the 10m platform and a bronze in the springboard (1936). After the Olympics she starred in TV commercials and started her own “Dorothy Poynton Aquatic Club” in Los Angeles, California. In 1968 she was voted into the International Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame.
Eleanor Holm, USA
Holm competed in the 1928 games but came in 5th in the 100m backstroke. Four years later she returned to win the gold medal in her home country at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Holm garnered fame not because of her athletic accomplishments as the world’s fastest backstroke swimmer but because of her rule breaking that expelled her from the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. On the boat to Berlin for the 1936 Games, she was said to have broken the team rules. According to Thelma Dunn, Holm had friends in the first-class area of the ship and she would socialize with them after curfew. One night, she drank champagne until she was drunk, gambled with reporters and refused the chaperone’s request to return to her quarters at 9 p.m. The USOC, specifically Avery Brundage, removed her from the team for breaking the rules and revoked her amateur status, despite 220 of her fellow athletes that signed a petition to reinstate her. It was shocking because everyone thought she was destined to defend her 1932 gold medal.
Throughout her career, she won 29 national championships and set six world records in backstroke. After she was ousted from the team, she reported on the ‘36 Games for the Hearst international News Service. Known for her beauty, the spotlight on Holm turned from the pool lanes to the silver screen. She starred in two Tarzan movies, was one of the first synchronized swimming performers and later became an interior decorator.
Helene Madison, USA
The Washington native first swam in Green Lake near Seattle in the summers before joining the Crystal Swim Club and later the Washington Athletic Club (WAC) where she could train year-round. When she was 16 years old she traveled to Miami for her first National indoor meet. Although she had been competing, setting regional records and receiving media attention, she was seen as an outsider compared to the more prominent east coast club swimmers. She set the swimming world on fire by setting four world records. As her notoriety grew and world records were now owned by her, she was offered $10,000 to swim professionally, a hefty sum worth several year’s salary. She turned down the offer so that she could swim in the 1932 Olympics. At this point, Madison had set 13 world records, of which 16 were possible. By the end of 1931, she had established 51 of 62 American records.
Her first and only Olympic appearance was in Los Angeles in 1932. There, she set an Olympic record in the 100m freestyle. With Josephine McKim, Helen Johns and Eleanor Garatti, the foursome set a world record in the 4x100m relay, smashing the previous one by nearly 10 seconds. She continued winning and setting world records in her final event, the 100m freestyle. By winning three golds in one Olympics, she was considered the most successful Olympian that year.
Claire Dennis, Austrailia
At 16 years old, Dennis was the youngest female winner at the 1932 Games and the only non-American to win a gold medal in women’s swimming. Her entry into swimming started, oddly enough, when she faked a swim. She wanted to join the local club for women when she was only seven years old. Her father told her she could but only if she could swim across Clovelly Ban in Sydney. After about 15 meters of the 30-meter distance, she grew tired but then realized she could touch the bottom. She fake-swam the rest of the way, and her father honored his offer. Then, she had a coach and eventually specialized in breaststroke.
While on the Olympic team, she didn’t have a coach but received advice from “Buster” Crabbe, a gold and bronze medalist in 1928. She also wore a Speedo swimsuit that almost got her disqualified because it was thought that the shoulders were cut too low, however it was found to meet Olympic rules. Part of Crabbe’s advice was to take three strokes underwater and touch the wall first. She did that and set the Olympic record. After not being selected for the 1936 Olympic team she retired.
Georgia Coleman, USA
Georgia Coleman had only been diving for six months before she made her first Olympic Team in 1928. There, she took home the bronze in springboard and the silver medal in platform diving.
In her second Olympic Games, Coleman was able to compete on home soil at the Los Angeles Games in 1932. She won gold in springboard and earned her second silver medal in platform. What set her apart from the other women was her athletic ability in performing a 2 ½ forward somersault in competition, a dive that only the men could perform at the time. In addition to the Olympics, from 1919-1933 she won 11 National AAU diving titles except for one for the 1-meter board. In 1937 she contracted polio and died at the age of 28 of pneumonia. Georgia Coleman was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1966.
Jean Shiley, USA
Shiley's first taste of Olympic experience came in 1928 when she came in fourth in the high jump. Between 1929 and 1932, she was America's dominate high jumper in the AAU national meets. Shiley had the notoriety of tying Babe Didrikson in the high jump in the 1932 Games, but history has noted Shiley as the gold medalist and Didrikson as the silver medalist. Both cleared the same height in the same number of tries but the judges deemed Didrikson’s jumping style illegal (they said she used the ‘diving’ style, meaning her head cleared the bar first). The men used this style whereas women used the scissor kick. The American women’s team desperately wanted Shiley to win because they were annoyed with the braggadocios behavior of Didrikson. The respect for Shiley was also was demonstrated when she was chosen as the Captain of the women's track and field team. Their height of 5' 5 3/4" stood as a world record for seven years and Shiley's indoor record of 5' 3 1/4" stood for 38 years.
Stella Walaslewiez (Walsh), Poland
In 1911 Walaslewiez was brought to the U.S. when she was an infant by her Polish parents. She became a world class sprinter but was not eligible to run for the only country she knew, the United States, because she didn't have citizenship. She lost her job during the Great Depression and Poland offered her the ability to go to school in Poland if she competed for them. Running under the Polish flag meant she had to return to the country of her birth, a place she didn’t know.
She represented Poland and won the 100m dash in 1932. In the 1936 Olympics she came in 2nd in the 100m to Helen Stephens. She wasn’t happy in Poland and returned to the US. Overall, it is said that she won over 5,000 races, set 20 world records and was the first woman to break 11 seconds in the 100m. But it wasn’t her running ability that brought the curious eye to Stella, it was her appearance. Mannish in her looks, many were suspicious that she was male. She kept to herself and never changed in the locker rooms with her competitors. She did marry later in life but it only lasted a few days. She hid her secret.
In 1980 she was the victim of a robbery and was killed. The coroner leaked her autopsy results, showing that Stella was intersex. Her former competitors wanted her records overturned, to no avail.
Ellen Preis, Austria
Preis was taught fencing by her Aunt who ran a fencing school in Austria after being Germany’s fencing champion. With skilled training, Preis became a three-time Olympic medalist: 1932 gold medal, and the bronze medal in 1936 and 1948. She was born in Germany but moved with her family to Austria in 1930. Though she requested to compete for Germany in 1932, they refused her appeal due to having a full team of top fencers. World War II cancelled the 1940 and 1944 games yet even after a 12 year pause in Olympic competition, she took home another bronze in the 1948 Games, in addition to winning world titles in 1947, 1949 and 1950. In the 1956 Olympics, she came in 7th.
Babe Didrikson, USA
Didrikson was America’s althetic phenom and she let everyone know it. She had won six individual events in the 1932 AAU track championship and won the team title, despite being a team of one. In the 1932 Olympics, she set the world record in the javelin throw and had a close win in the 80m hurdles. She tied for first in the high jump with Jean Shiley but officially she is recorded as the silver medalist.
After the 1932 Olympic Games, she was stripped of her amateur status because of a print advertisement that used a picture of her hurdling next to a car. She denied that she gave permission, but the AAU decided that it was an endorsement, and her amateur track and field career was over. There was speculation regarding the fairness of the ruling to punish Babe for not fitting into the feminine standard. She was a brash, cocky tomboy from Texas that said what she wanted to the press. Her unpolished, sometimes crass quips both attracted and cautioned the media. She was branded a “muscle mole,” an unflattering term that made American white women’s participation in track and field less attractive for decades.
After years of athletic performance gigs that demonstrated her talents, she became the most charismatic co-founder of the LPGA in 1950.
Lillian Hopeland (Copeland), USA
Copeland was the best American track and field thrower between 1925-1932. She started her athletic career when she was in Jr. High School in 1922. Her first major victory in the shot put came three years later when she won the AAU championship in 1925. She defended her title from 1926-28 and 1931. In the 1926 AAU competition, she set a world record in the discus and won the event again in 1927. Shot put was not offered in the 1928 Olympic Games so she entered in the discus and earned the silver medal.
Copeland was one of the fortunate ones that did not have to travel far for the 1932 Olympic Games because she lived in Los Angeles. Her last throw of 133’ 2'' earned her the gold medal in this discus, set an American record, an Olympic record and a world record. The 1932 Olympics was the first time women turned three time in the circle before releasing their throw, like the men.
There can be a bit of splitting of hairs in the semantics of what makes a trading card. I am assuming that the pictures were included in the magazine and then hand-cut by the reader and pasted to the booklet. Does that make it a trading card or a form of ephemera? I see it this way, these are not that different than the Sports Illustrated for Kids sports cards that were included in their magazine as a perforated sheet of nine cards. They might not have had the traditional distribution of trading cards but regardless, they are still a treasure of women’s sports history.
The men's cards include:
J. G. Oxenstieras
Ivar Johannson
V. Ronnmark
J. Riechhoff
C. Westergren
Rudolf Svensson
E. Malmberg
L. Lehtinen
Volmari Iso-Hollo
M. Jarinen
A. Pavesi
E. Tolan (USA)
J. Bausch (USA)
W. Miller (USA)
C. Crabbe (USA)
K. Kitamura
V. Tsuruta
H. Smith (USA)
D. McNaughton
L. Beccali
C. Nambu
J. Zabala
T. Hampson
G. Saling (USA)
H. Pearce
E. Flynn (USA)
C. Barth (USA)
C. Robledo
I. Stevens
H. Gwynne
D. Carstens
S. Lowell
G. Marzi
R. Merigi
R. Ismayr
P. O’Callaghan
L. Sexton (USA)
J. Andersson (USA)
J. Brendel
E. Gray
I Skobla
W. Carr
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