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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL
Back View - Examples

The back of each card in this series contains identical text, in a vertical format printed in a shade of blue (commonly), with the left side containing the standard "Grind Your Coffee At Home" message explaining the benefits of do-it-yourself grinding, and the right side explaining what the series represents.

There's one variation in the text that I'm aware of. The Explanatory message contains a reference to either or (note the position of the apostrophe). I can confirm that all 50 cards exist with the Arbuckles' spelling, but so far I haven't been able to identify all 50 with Arbuckle's, which seems to be much scarcer than Arbuckles' (by about a 1:12 ratio in my accumulation). In fact, I have yet to see any cards numbered from 91-100 in the Arbuckle's variety. I've also noticed that the cards with Arbuckle's most often seem to be printed on a brighter, whiter stock than the others (or at least they haven't been as susceptible to toning over the years). The weight of the card stock seems to be the same.

A similar variation exists in the text of the State Maps series and, as with that set, I suspect that "Arbuckle's" may have been a first printing and "Arbuckles'" was a second printing.

Also, while almost all of the cards in this series that I have, or have seen, have the text printed in a shade of blue, I currently have six cards (#57 - England, #65 - Egypt, #72 - German Empire#77 - Newfoundland, #88 - Denmark, and #89 - Japan) that also exist with the text in brown. These cards seem to be on a slightly lighter weight stock than the standard cards. There appears to be no difference in either the text itself (all are the Arbuckles' variety) or in the illustrations on the front of these cards, and the copyright date is the same, 1889. Brown-backed versions of #58 - Russia and #71 - Siberia are also known to exist. At this point I don't know the origin of these cards, or if the entire series exists with the brown text variation.

Blue Text


Brown Text

TEXT

Left section: Grind Your Own
Right section:

EXPLANATORY.

The series of cards to which this one belongs, consists of 50, each card of which shows a correct colored map, properly bounded, of one of the chief countries of the world, and portrays the peculiarities of industry, scenery, etc., of each nation, in original pictures, true to nature, made by the best modern artists. Every package of Arbuckles' Coffee contains either one of these cards, or one of our series of 50 Zoological cards, an equal number of which are used in conjunction with the geographical cards, both series being so distributed that every 100 pound case of coffee contains one hundred cards, each one different from all the others. Teachers, in the public schools, are unanimous in their praise of our object lesson cards, and pronounce them one of the happiest, and most impressive mediums, for imparting instruction to all classes of students.

Names of Countries represented:
United States Belgium
Canada Sweden & Norway
Newfoundland Turkey
Greenland Greece
Mexico Portugal
Central America Austro-Hungary
The Guiana's Switzerland
Venezuela Russia
Bolivia Spain
U.S. of Colombia Denmark
Uruguay The Netherlands
Paraguay Persia
Brazil Siberia
Peru Palestine
Chili British India
Ecuador Chinese Empire
Argentine Rep'lic Japan
Sandwich Islands Afghanistan
Cuba Siam
England Arabia
Scotland Central Africa
Ireland Egypt
France Morocco
Italy Cape Colony
German Empire Australia