Description:

The 1952 Royal Desserts “Royal Stars of Basketball” set is classified in the American Card Catalog by Burdick as F219-2. It is an 8-card set that was found on the back of Royal Puddings, Royal Tapioca Puddings, Royal Gelatin Desserts, and Royal Custard Flavor Dessert Mix. These cards came in two versions. The most common version has black and red lettering with a black and white image. The second more rare version has blue and red lettering with a blue tinted image. Primary indications are that the blue tint version was exclusively on the custard flavor dessert mix, while the more common version of these cards was found on everything else. The term “common” is used loosely here, as none of these cards are common. They can be found on Ebay and in high end auctions on occasion. They frequently suffer from poor edge trimming issues due to the nature of being cut off a box – that is a difficult task! Royal Desserts cards were also produced for baseball, hockey, movie stars, Howdy Doody, Alice in Wonderland, and Stars of the Sky (airplanes). Research indicates that many show the proper measure of these cards to be 2 5/8” x 3 ¼”. However, auctions in the past also show boxes to measure at 2 ¾” x 3 ½”. These cards contain a short bio of the player. You could also send in for an 8-page “Plastic Album”. This required 15 cents plus 3 Royal Dessert package fronts. I could be biased, but the perception is that the Royal Desserts basketball cards are less common than the other sports. I have yet to confirm this theory, but are they significantly more expensive to acquire. The George Mikan card is clearly one of the great vintage cards in our hobby. The collection does contain a complete set of these cards. Additional images are provided to show better reference examples in the hobby. The abbreviation “NIC” will be placed on images of items not in the collection.