(Original Artwork: Non-Sports Trading Cards). Original Pen, Ink, and Watercolor Artwork for Gum, Inc.’s 1938 Horrors of War Card #286: Chamberlain Meets Hitler in Peace Effort; Sold with a PSA 8 NM-MT Graded Example of the Card. Philadelphia, PA: Gum, Inc., 1938. The original drawing, executed in a horizontal landscape format on artist board, measures 2-15/16" x 2-3/8" (75 x 60 mm). Accompanied by a pristine example of the final published card, similarly oriented horizontally, featuring the artwork printed in full color to the front panel and historical narrative text and titles printed in black to the reverse. The commercial card is officially graded PSA 8 NM-MT (Certification # 14121265) and remains permanently encapsulated within a secure, tamper-evident PSA protective plastic holder measuring 3-3/16" x 2-1/2" (81 x 64 mm).
The physical condition of the original artwork is graded (9/10) - EXCELLENT (utilizing a standardized 10-point scale for photographic prints and original works of art, indicating mild condition issues that are barely perceptible to the naked eye). The artwork retains exceptional color fidelity, deep ink lines, and its original structural integrity, with the composition displaying only trivial signs of native handling or peripheral wear typical of 1930s commercial illustration boards. The physical condition of the published card is graded PSA 8 NM-MT, representing an extraordinarily high-grade survival of a condition-sensitive issue, boasting razor-sharp corners, brilliant registration, and clean surfaces.
Gum, Inc.’s legendary 1938 Horrors of War trading card series stands universally as the most famous, historically significant, and fiercely sought-after non-sports card set ever produced. As documented on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website, the series was "initially conceived as a way to graphically illustrate and inform the public about the atrocities of the Chinese-Japanese War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and the Spanish Civil War, the set proved so popular that an additional 48 cards were added [to the original 240] about Germany and the beginning of World War II." Visually unsparing and highly controversial for its era, the series depicted scenes of raw battlefield violence under the publisher's famous reverse-side anti-war maxim: "To know the HORRORS OF WAR is to want PEACE." Within this historic 288-card run, the three high-number cards depicting Adolf Hitler (#'s 277, 283, and 286) represent the absolute pinnacle of collector desirability and market value. This specific lot comprises the rare, master-level original production artwork for card #286, capturing the high-stakes Munich pre-war peace summit between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler in its original horizontal composition—offered alongside a world-class, investment-grade PSA 8 example of the final printed card.
A TRANSCENDENT, UNPARALLELED PIECE OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY POP CULTURE EPHEMERA COUPLING THE MUSEUM-GRADE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION ARTWORK FOR GUM, INC.’S 1938 HORRORS OF WAR CARD #286 WITH AN EXCEPTIONALLY RARE PSA 8 GRADED EXAMPLE OF THE HISTORIC HITLER-CHAMBERLAIN SUMMIT CARD, REPRESENTING A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE, WORLD WAR II PROPAGANDA, OR THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN NON-SPORTS TRADING CARDS.
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