Smoking Uncle Sam

Q Anything old that pictures Uncle Sam is wanted for my collection. I have posters, advertising cards, cigar labels, product labels, toys, printed fabrics, dishes with the classic Uncle Sam in a top hat with stars and a stripes shirt, and even a folk-art carved broom handle that looks like a thin Uncle Sam. Friends say it wasn’t legal to show him smoking. Are these pictures more valuable?

A Your friends may be confusing the story with the baseball card that is now very rare because it was an ad for cigarettes and the player made them stop using his image to promote smoking. There are also limits to the legal use of the president’s name or image to promote a product without special permission. But Uncle Sam is a caricature and he is often copied. Smoking was popular, and no one had suggested nicotine was bad for the health when Uncle Sam was first pictured. The cigar or cigarette he held in ads represented his strength. The creation of Uncle Sam as a symbol representing the United States was created by Thomas Nast during the 1860s after the Civil War, but was soon associated with the Spanish -America War, Cuban independence, and thoughts of cigars. He was named for Samuel Wilson who supplied food to troops in the War of 1812. James Montgomery Flag redesigned Uncle Sam and gave him the white beard and stars and stripes suit. That version became famous with a military recruiting poster in 1916. Cigars do not change the value of an Uncle Sam likeness, although younger generations of Americans have learned cigars cause bad health, so an icon of the United States isn’t expected to have the bad habit. 15