I submit vintage non-sports cards to SGC fairly often. SGC is my grader of choice for many reasons, but the biggest three being cost, customer service, and turnaround time.
Sending vintage non-sports cards that very rarely (if ever) get submitted often causes my turnaround time to be inflated beyond their 5-10 business days guarantee. My last few submissions have taken 30-40+ days… However, my recent submission was received by them on 12/5, and my scans were loaded AND cards were shipped on 12/11. That’s just 3 business days 🤯
Here’s one of the cards I submitted - 1930s Gold Brand Presidents Abraham Lincoln, which received a 2. This is just the 3rd copy to be graded, and I’ve now owned 2 of them. We can be quick to complain about poor customer service, but let’s try to celebrate when customer service is outstanding!

The 1932 US Caramel set is a 31 card set featuring every President from George Washington to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The cards came in 3 different colors: red, orange, and blue, blue being the rarest of the 3.

When you purchased a package of candy, you received 1 President card in the package. The company offered a prize if you acquired and mailed in all 31 cards: 1 pound of chocolate. Here’s the catch: they withheld the William McKinley card from distribution so that people would keep buying their candy, and they would never have to give away a free pound of chocolate.

This William McKinley is considered the T206 Honus Wagner of vintage non-sports cards, with roughly 10 copies known to even exist. In 2014, an SGC 5 copy sold for $96,000. Because of how rare and expensive this card is, collectors consider the set “complete” at 30 cards without the McKinley.

Here’s a picture of my complete set that I’ve worked on over the past couple of years. I’m working to finish the set in all-blues, which is the rarest color by far as mentioned above. There are a few complete sets out there that I’m aware of, however I’ve never seen an all-blue complete set.

Do you collect vintage non-sports cards? If not, what non-sports topics would interest you the most? 🤔

I‘m brand new to Mantel, looking forward to helping grow the vintage non-sports card community on here!

Pictured is a card from my collection from 1909, depicting our Founding Fathers drafting the Declaration of Independence 🇺🇸