Davy Crockett
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The first series of Davy Crockett trading cards was released in 1956 when the mania among American kids for all things Davy Crockett was at its height. The cards were well-received by kids and are still highly valued by collectors. There were 88 cards in the set, with 1-cent and 5-cent wrappers known.
The second series of Davy Crockett cards are generally more highly valued to modern collectors than the first, because the second set was released as kids started to grow tired of the fad. Therefore, far fewer second-series cards were printed, shipped, and put into collections, making them more scarce and thus, more in demand comparatively speaking. Second series cards can be differentiated by their green-colored backs.
The cards featured full-color photos on the front, with a paragraph of text on the reverse.
First-series cards were printed on both white and gray stock, with white being far less common, thus commanding a higher price; second-series cards were in gray stock only.
The first card of the first series (#1, 'King of the Wild Frontier') is the most scarce of that set, not only because its portrait of actor Fess Parker in his Davy outfit leaning against a tree was widely collected by kids, but also due to the fact that many card sets' first cards are harder to find in high grade due to natural mishandling. In the second set, the first eight cards are generally recognized as being more difficult to find.
Also, there is an error card in the second set, #20A, 'Ambush,' which features an incorrect title on the back ('Look Out Georgie'); this error was caught and corrected in later print runs, so that both correct and incorrect cards can be found; but the corrected version ('Ambush' on front and back matter) carries a price nearly ten times that of the uncorrected, and set prices traditionally do not include the corrected version.