2021 Historic Autograph and Card Company 1945 End of WWII

 

Here we have a pack of 2012 Historic Autograph and Card Company 1945 The End of WWII cards. The wrapper features stylized text and background. It's a foil wrapper and seems to be the same quality as one would find with a brand-name sports pack. Information regarding the number of cards in the set is a bit hard to come by, as there are multiple parallels and chase subsets. From my research, there are about 146 base cards. But, the base cards themselves are a parallel, as you will soon see below, so the base set is actually 292 cards. A "checklist" of sorts is provided at the end of the post.

Each pack contains 10 cards. Some of the chase/subsets include hair relics, uniform relics, signatures, dog tags, challenge coins, printing plates, 1945 coin cards, art cards, and "aurora" cards. Honestly, I probably forgot a subset or two. 

The cards themselves are borderless and feature black-and-white or color photos/images related to 1945. The top portion (or left side for vertical cards) features a wooden fence-like strip with the card's caption and "1945" on it. The main image/subject of the card takes up the majority of the space on the card.

Cards may feature significant places, events, and/or people. This Bob Hope card shows a VERY young Hope in uniform:

The cards are glossy, giving a nice shine. The "Aurora" cards (not found in this pack) have foil embossing on the caption section and are serially numbered to 45. There is another subset numbered to 199 that is also foil. Below is another base set card:

Considering many of the images are from 1945, the folks who put this set together did a very nice job of enhancing and detailing the images for presentation in the set:

As mention above, some of the cards are full color:

I even manged to pull a Cleveland Rams Professional Football League Championship ticket card from the pack. The ticket is just the image of the ticket and not a relic, but still pretty cool:

The next-to-last card in the pack features the V2 being launched:

And now, the last card in the pack: a Jackie Robinson Uniform Card (kinda)!

When I saw this card, I nearly fell out of my chair! That is a photo of Jackie Robinson, and that *IS* a WWII uniform relic. However, my heart sank a little when I flipped the card over:

There, near the bottom in small italics print: "The relic used to create this card comes from an authentic WWII era uniform or eqipment. The item was not worn by the individual that appears on the front of the card." Well, that's disappointing. 

For what it's worth, the backs of all the cards feature the caption from the front repeated and centered in bold. Under that is a paragraph giving information about the subject featured on front. The card number is shown in the upper right corner. At the bottom of the card, we see copyright information and the "HA" insignia. Parallels and inserts have additional information based on the relic/insert.

As I mentioned above, the base set is its own parallel. Each card in the base set is embossed with either "ALLIES" or "AXIS" and the entire set has both cards, according to my research. I tried to capture this embossing for both sides, but it is subtle:

This is a unique set of cards and packs, boxes, and even hobby boxes can still be bought (through auction sites, tiktok, and from the HA website). The hobby boxes include a checklist pamphlet with all the cards listed (include chase/parallels), a sticker, and potentially other goodies.

Checklist from the HA website (PDF) - https://www.historicautographcompany.com/_files/ugd/296681_463f98460e63427cafa69f99ec2c714c.pdf