“Duke put out this set of stagepersonalities around 1889. The cards are color paintings featuringhead-and-shoulders portraits. In each case, the person is shown wearing acostume from a stage production in which he or she played. (One must rememberthat the stage was the major source of entertainment in the 1880s.) Dukeproduced two series of these cards and this first series contains SarahBernhardt, Lillie Langtry, and Lillian Russell, the \"big\" stars ofthe time. These command a premium over the average card value. The cards comein two sizes with the smaller size containing an ad for Duke\'s Cigarettes andthe slightly larger size touting Duke\'s Mixture, which are less common and morevaluable. These larger cards are much scarcer than the smaller ones. Thelithographer was Knapp & Co. The secondseries of actors and actresses is very similar to the first and was probablydistributed in 1889. They come in two sizes and with and without frame lines.The Duke\'s Mixture cards are larger and harder to find than those advertisingDuke\'s Cigarettes.”

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