Home          History          Programs           Tickets           Cards           Master Gallery           Fight Songs           Books         This Season 

Harvard-Yale Football Cards: 1894 Mayo Cut Plug Tobacco Set 

  
      1894 Mayo Card-front
  
 
     1894 Mayo Card-back

"Donruss 1894"
2002 football card  tribute
to the 1894 Mayo Card series
 
 

View Mayo Cut Plug Cards              (cards home)
 
Football's First Card Set
Cards in the late nineteenth century appeared in many different types of tobacco products, part of multifaceted advertising and marketing campaigns for tobacco companies. Richmond, Virginia based company P.H. Mayo would be the first company to introduce a dedicated football card series in the form of the 1894 Mayo Cut Plug tobacco cards.

The Mayo series consisted of college football cards distributed in tins of chewing tobacco. The series contained 35 cards of top Ivy League players from "The Big Three" of football schools: Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

The players were dressed not in uniforms, but in turtleneck sweaters and hooded sweat shirts sporting the names of their universities in large letters. The cards featured sepia photos of the player surrounded by a black border in which the player's name, his college and a Mayo Cut Plug ad appeared. The cards measured approximately 1 5/8" X 2 7/8".

The Mayo card set was the first series set of cards, coming six years after the first football card of Yale's Henry W. Beecher

Each card is unnumbered. The Poe Mayo card (likely Neilson Poe) in the set is a direct descendant of the famous writer Edgar Allan Poe. The originals would sell for over $35,000.

Donruss 1894
The impact of the Mayo Card Series is still evident today. Cardmaker Donruss' 2002 football cards include a 25-card set entitled "Donruss 1894, " where special football cards are fashioned after the original Mayo series.
(click for an side by side comparison).