Last night I was organizing some of my cards and came across this variant that I was not aware existed. Variants of the Art Corner cards mostly have to do with the box for the stamp. In some cards it is there, in others not. But that’s it…all else is the same. There is one Art Corner Card that is known to have a text variation on the back, but that’s NT0588, a Chip ‘n’ Dale card. And that gets us to the cards shown here which have the same variation.
Here we see two versions of NT0580 (a great Donald Duck card by the way!) The top example (postmarked in February, 1956) is manufactured from a different paper stock than the one on the 
bottom (postmarked in June, 1956); it’s not a glossy stock, but has more of a matte finish to it. It also is narrower than the card below it by a little over an eighth on an inch. But the most obvious difference is the text.
The text on the top, matte card says, “DISNEYLAND is a magic kingdom built on a 160 acre site in Anaheim, California. This card was design by the Artists at the WALT DISNEY STUDIO to be sold exclusively by the ART CORNER at DISNEYLAND.”
The text on the lower, glossy card says, “DISNEYLAND is a magic kingdom built on a 160 acre site in Anaheim, California. This card was design by the Artists at the WALT DISNEY STUDIO and distributed by the ART CORNER at DISNEYLAND.”
Why the difference? Hard to say…but I think we can say with some level of certainty that the card manufactured by “Angeleno Photo Service” is older than the “Litho by Bob Plunkett” card. Why? Well, these were one and the same company (check out this link), with Angeleno Photo Service being renamed Bob Plunkett Color Press probably sometime in the late 1950’s. The interesting part, though, is that in Ken Eslick’s last blog post, he shows a receipt for an order of Art Corner cards. It is dated 1959, and the receipt is on Angeleno Photo Service header.
So…a pretty interesting rabbit trail on these cards. Given this, I suspect that there are similar variants for the other Art Corner cards…anyone have an example you care to share?
Until next time…
I happened upon this post while searching for photos of my grandfather’s print shop. You may well be correct as to which of the above cards came earlier, but I don’t think that the difference in the back side text correlates to the business name change. “Litho by Bob Plunkett” appears on things from throughout the span of his business. The name Angeleno Photo Service was still being used for some purposes when I was a kid in the late sixties and early seventies. It’s also quite possible that both card stocks with both sets of rear text were in the print shop concurrently. Hope I haven’t frustratingly clouded the issue for you.