From 1912-1930, Kraus Manufacturing Co. published both souvenir postcards and movie lobby cards. Generally their work consisted of half-tone lithography of lesser quality, i.e. cheaper to produce and sell. Their postcards featured freaks, vaudeville players, silent movie stars– including Lon Chaney as shown below– and Broadway stage plays and actors. Also see below a Kraus advertisement in the 1913 Moving Picture World magazine. Interestingly, while Kraus was initially located at 14 East 17th Street in New York City, they later moved to 220 W 42nd Street, just two doors down from Hubert’s Museum. There are at least four distinct series of Kraus sideshow performer postcards. The cards are all identified with the Kraus name printed on their verso. Most well-known are the Kraus’ “wood-bordered” postcard series, that put a rather unattractive fake wood graphic frame around the edges of the cards. The “knock-out” or cut-out series of cards feature dramatic performer portraits cut out or shaped to the outlines of their bodies on a white background. Seemingly scarcer than the other series, the full-bleed series cards feature the background going all the way to the edge of the cards without a border, and sometimes with a white space at the bottom for the performer’s name and stats, including the Dreamland Circus Sideshow tag line. The last series, and probably the earliest produced, is the white bordered series of cards with performers shown within a frame bordered in white. All of the sideshow postcards seem to have been made exclusively for performers who appeared at Coney Island, and to have been sold exclusively at Coney Island. Evidence that the photographs used on the Kraus cards were taken specifically for this series of cards is that most, if not all, of these photos are not be found elsewhere in other formats. In addition, many of the performers found on these cards are otherwise unknown but for their appearance on these cards. The Kraus sideshow cards are difficult to find, desirable, and unfortunately were so cheaply printed, on thin and inferior stock, that they are very often found in poorer condition– chipped, bent, and/or flaking. Kraus’ branded postcards for the Coney Island Dreamland Circus Sideshow featured most of the famed freaks and sideshow performers who appeared at that venue beginning in the late teens to the mid-1920s. A checklist of these Kraus cards is in the works.