I first saw the 1961 Nu-Card Dinosaur Collectors Album while flipping through Mastro Auctions’ August 2001 catalog and immediately wanted to track one down.
Mastro described it as:
“An interesting companion to the popular Nu-Card Dinosaur set, the 8 1/4″ x 12″ album could be acquired by sending in 8 cards with letters that spelled out “d-i-n-o-s-a-u-r” from the series. There is a prototype of the DINOSAUR wrapper on the leather-like cover and example wrapper DINOSAUR with the album offer on the back is included.”
Here’s the back of the wrapper explaining the offer.
And here’s what the card backs look like, so you can see the box with the letters in them.
Seemed straightforward enough. But after looking for one for a while and not seeing many examples, I started wondering why they’re so scarce.
Then I came across this explanation from the Prehistoric Life Collectibles Encyclopedia:
“The letters next to the “See wrapper for free album” box printed on the majority of the cards are slightly less of a mystery. The wrappers of this set contain an offer for a “free” album to anyone who (a) sends in eight cards with the letters on the back that spell the name of this set (i.e., D I N O S A U R) or (b) sends in one wrapper and $1.00. The catch was that Nu-Card short-printed cards with the letter “S” making it extremely difficult to obtain an album which incidentally may or may not account for the associated scarcity of the album itself. From what I understand, there were 16 cards which were printed with the “S” back as listed below. Apparently, Nu-Card printed 10 copies of each S-backed card and then distributed them at a rate of approximately one card per every 10 cases.”
That explains it.
What looked like a simple mail-in promotion was actually extremely difficult to complete, and likely why the album is so tough today.
Still a bucket list item for me.
Happy collecting!
P.S. Yes, “S” variation cards sell for a lot more than regular cards. Here are a few examples from Card Ladder:
Be First to Comment