More Famous Business Cards

As you no doubt know, one of my many fascinating hobbies is collecting old business cards. Here are just a few from the collection:

Here we have a typical no-frills (also known as "cheap") business card from the 1960s. As you can see, the phone number is missing; presumably Mooney's secretary forgot to add it when ordering the cards. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been to have such a scatterbrained and inefficient personal assistant.

It appears that Mooney was too frugal to have the cards reprinted and either he or the secretary simply scribbled the phone number in by hand. Classy.

A rare vertical business card; very unusual for its time. The overly ornate nature of the design is unusual as well, evoking an earlier period of time.

Strangely enough even though it looks like the card is a hundred years old, it's actually roughly the same age as the others shown here. This "Munster," whoever he was, must have been a real beast and was extremely hard on his cards.

Another typical card from the late 1950s - early 1960s. Cards of this era were generally bland and conforming, not wanting to rock the boat or stand out from the crowd.

I can only imagine how many times the poor sap who owned this card had to explain to people, possibly even his own family, exactly what it was he did for a living.

Famous Business Cards

One of my many fascinating hobbies is collecting old business cards. Here are just a few from the collection:

Here's a card from the McMann & Tate Advertising firm. For many decades they were the number one ad agency in New York; none of their other competitors could touch them. No one could ever figure out the secret to their success. In fact one of their rivals said their ability to win over important clients and come up with innovative campaigns was almost "like magic."

A rare matching sets of cards from a now defunct California bank. It's unusual to find two cards in such good shape from the same business. The Commerce Bank was a cornerstone of the California financial system for many decades. Then tragedy struck as their largest depositor pulled his assets from the bank sometime in the 1980s, sending the institution into a downward spiral from which it could not recover. Tragically the C.E.O. took his own life by leaping from the roof of the bank when the F.D.I.C. arrived to take control.

Here's the story of this classic card dating from the 1970s. Phillips & Associates was a small architectural firm that produced few noteworthy designs. Many of their critics denounced their concepts as "out of date" and "stuck in the past." They limped along for many years, barely managing to survive, until sometime in the early 2000s. Suddenly their retro designs were "in" again, and the public went wild for their work, generating their greatest successes to date.

Pick A Card, Any Card

It's about time! A full four months or so after I settled on a design for a business card, I finally went to the print shop this week and had some printed up. Hey, what can I say, I'm busy.

They turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. The paper's a bit thinner than I expected, as shown by the slight curve on each one, but that's my fault for not checking the thickness of the stock beforehand. All in all I'm pretty happy with them.

Here's a better view of the card.

I almost made a horrible mistake at the print shop. I gave them a pdf file with 25 cards laid out on a 12" x 18" page. I asked them how much it would be to print one 12x18 sheet of paper. They said it varied by the quantity, but $1.30 each was a good ballpark figure. I said that sounded fine and told them I wanted 500.

While the print lady disappeared into the back, I got out my phone and used the calculator to multiply $1.30 by 500. I gasped when that turned out to be $650!!! Yikes! I realized that I hadn't made myself very clear-- I wanted 500 business cards, not 500 12x18 sheets!!! Because I'd given them a file with 25 cards per sheet, I only needed 20 sheets, for a total of $26.

I immediately told her of the mistake, and made sure she understood exactly what I wanted. That would have been a disaster if I'd gone back to the shop and had been presented with a bill for $650 for 12,500 cards!