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Mark B. Ledenbach's vintage Halloween collectibles blog.

Antique 1940s Halloween Party Invitation Black Cats Pumpkin Unused 4.5x 3” VTG

Whitney was an organization that seemingly didn’t prioritize organization. They manufactured boxes for both place cards and invitations designed to hold ten items plus their envelopes. The contents of any box, though, was a crapshoot. Like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, a buyer never knew what they were actually buying. Whitney would load each box with whatever was at hand. Sometimes all ten invitations would be identical, sometimes the box contained an assortment. The assortment would be truly that - sometimes there would be cats and sometimes witches. I’ve seen MANY complete boxes of Whitney place cards and invitations and seldom, if ever, were the contents consistent. What I have noticed is that their place cards and invitations featuring witches are far less common than the ones featuring cats. This penchant for running their business so loosely may have contributed to their demise. Whitney was toast by 1942.