Goodwin & Company was an American
tobacco manufacturer from
New York City. Initially E. Goodwin and Brother, the company was founded before the
American Civil War. It was known for its
cigarette
A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opp ...
brands "Gypsy Queen" and "Old Judge". In 1890, the company was merged, along with four others, into
James Buchanan Duke's
American Tobacco Company to create an American
monopoly on tobacco product manufacturing and retail.
Charles Goodwin Emery (died 1915), who had the principal interest in Goodwin & Company, became Treasurer of the American Tobacco Company. Emery built a showplace "castle" known as Calumet Castle at the
Thousand Islands (
Clayton, New York) and was principal investor in the grand New Hotel Frontenac nearby.
The company's
tobacco trading card
A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other ...
s, depicting
baseball players, other athletes, and a variety of social scenes and portraits are collectibles. In 1887, Goodwin & Co. were among the first to issue trading cards to promote their brands, first using sepia-toned photographic
albumen prints, and later
chromolithographic reproductions of multi-colored
etchings.
In 2011,
Upper Deck Company reactivated the Goodwin Champions line, primarily to compete with
Topps' revival of the
Allen & Ginter brand. Similar to the original Goodwin Champions set, the revived line primarily features athletes from various American sports.
Card sets
* ''Old Judge'', 1887–90 (N172), the first major set of baseball cards, comprising over 2,000 images and using albumen photoprints.
* ''Gypsy Queen'', 1887 (N175), using the same images as the "Old Judge" cards, but advertising Goodwin's other brand
* ''Goodwin Champions'', 1888 (N162), a set of 50 athletes in various disciplines, the first Goodwin set to use colored chromolithography.
* ''Old Judge Cabinets'', 1888–89 (N173), a large-formatted set of albumen print photographs that could be retrieved in exchange for mailed-in coupons.
See also
*
Australian rules football card
*
Baseball card
Notes
References
* Stephen Wong, Susan Einstein: "Smithsonian Baseball: Inside the World's Finest Private Collections";
HarperCollins, 2005 ().
Baseball cardsat the
Library of Congress
* "Charles Goodwin Emery," article in Paul Malo's ''Fools' Paradise''.
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Baseball cards
Tobacco companies of the United States
Trading card companies
Defunct manufacturing companies based in New York City