About us

The Australian Cartophilic Society (ACS) was formed when five interested cigarette and trade card collectors got together on 13 July 1968 at a meeting organized by Bon (“Penn”) Penhallurick. The attendees were Messrs. Upton, Quigley, Burnell, Grant and Penhallurick.

The five founding members had been collecting cigarette and trade cards for many years, some far back in their childhood when these small coloured or black and white cards were included in tobacco and cigarette packets as well as with many confectionary and food lines. 

Early meetings of the ACS were held in members’ homes or at Penn’s bookshop in Little Collins Street Melbourne, where Penn and his wife Nina sold secondhand books and prints. They also sold cigarette and trade cards as well as postcards as a small sideline, which brought collectors into the shop and ultimately the founding of the Australian Cartophilic Society. As membership grew, meetings were held in a succession of larger venues that were soon outgrown. In 1979 a very suitable meeting room was found at Balwyn Library in Whitehorse Road Balwyn and has been the Society’s permanent meeting venue ever since. 

Our website site contains a shop where members will find many items that will make their collecting more fun:

• A range of reference books on cards and their manufacturers
• Folders and sheets to store cards and postcards in an attractive and safe manner
• Books produced by our members

Each year we conduct five card fairs.  These events are very popular and provide a great opportunity for members and collectors to catch up – and to find that card needed to complete a set! We have over forty vendors at each fair and there is a wide range of collectable items from the 1890’s through to today’s modern cards.  Predictably, footy cards are the most collected items, but there is also a huge range of other sport and non-sport cards, postcards, swap cards and other ephemera items. We have found that collectors usually collect more than just one thing, so who knows what might be on sale!

We have over 250 members and one of the things that they really look forward to is our quarterly magazine.  The magazine is full of articles and images written by our members.  There is also a postal auction which offers our members an opportunity to buy and sell cards and postcards. 

And of course, every edition of the magazine contains another episode of the adventures of Collector Kev – and it seems like there is a bit of Kev in all of us.

More details about our meetings, card fairs, our shop, and contacting us can be found throughout this website.