Vintage Petty Girl I & II Trading Card Sets 🎨 1994–1995 George Petty Pinup Art Sealed NOS 21st Century Archives Complete 100-Card Collector Box

Why Do Petty Girl I and II Belong Together? 🎨 Vintage 1994–1995 George Petty Pinup Trading Card Sets, Sealed

Size: 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" cards, two factory-sealed 50-card boxes ~ Factory sealed, New Old Stock.

I love finding these two side by side, because they're really one story split into two boxes. This is The Petty Girl and The Petty Girl II — the complete 1994 and 1995 boxed card sets from 21st Century Archives, each a full run of 50 cards built around George Petty's pin-up art, both still sealed in their factory shrink wrap exactly as they came off the line thirty years ago.

🐰 What's Actually Printed on Each Box

Box one is glossy black with bold yellow lettering — "Classic Pinup Art by George Petty, THE PETTY GIRL, Premium Collectible Trading Cards." The figure on the front is in pink, and what she's wearing is a rabbit-ear hood, one gloved hand up near her chin like she's about to say something clever. No year is printed anywhere on this box — the Trading Card Database and PSA's own population records both place Series I in 1994.

Box two is cream, "The Petty Girl II" in black type with an orange numeral II. She's a different pose entirely — glancing back over her shoulder, in a dark sheer swimsuit, one leg reaching into a strapped high-heel sandal. Turn this box over and it prints ©1995 The Petty Family right on the back panel, which is the only copyright date either box actually carries. So: Series I is 1994, Series II is 1995, and only one of the two boxes says so.

Series I's back panel opens with a line I can't help but like: "The Petty Girl was to print what Harlow and Grable were to film." Series II's opens on his technique: "The Petty Girl was a marvel of design and technical achievement." Card backs on both series were written by Reid Stewart Austin, credited right on the box as a "world-renowned authority" on pin-up art. And the box copy doesn't hold back: "George Petty was to the American woman what Norman Rockwell was to the family. Without George Petty's Petty Girl, there would have been no Varga Girl or Playboy Playmate, for the entire concept of a pinup in a magazine was his." And my favorite line of all: "Within a year of her appearance in the first issue of Esquire in Depression dark 1933, the Petty Girl began her heady climb, stepping serenely over the worshipping forms of college boy and corporate head alike." Hugh Hefner clearly agreed; he wrote the foreword to the big 1997 book of Petty's pin-ups. Series I also carries the caption "I want to report this phone out of order — I haven't had a call all evening."

Both series carry a one-of-five special insert, randomly seeded through the print run — a Ridgid Tool card in Series I, a Jantzen card in Series II. It's the luck of a sealed box, not a guarantee.

🖌️ The Man Behind the Girl

George Petty was born in Abbeville, Louisiana, in 1894, and learned to handle an airbrush as a kid in his father's photo shop — which turns out to be exactly the tool that made his name. He was freelancing by 1926, and when Esquire launched its very first issue in October 1933, Petty's art was in it. He stayed with the magazine until 1956, and worked for True as well. It's Petty's Esquire gatefolds that are credited with originating and popularizing the fold-out centerfold as a magazine device — before him, magazines put a girl on the cover; Petty put her inside, as a running feature. He also painted calendar art for Esquire, for True, and for the Ridgid Tool Company. One quirk of his style: Petty's women ran a bit longer in the leg and smaller in the head than the actual models who sat for him — an exaggeration that became his signature.

His reach went well past the newsstand. Reproductions of his pin-ups were painted as nose art on WWII aircraft, including the B-17 Memphis Belle. A 1959 rendering of a Petty Girl on a SAGE computer is sometimes called the earliest known figurative computer art. Two of his images ended up on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And his own daughter modeled for the "Flying Lady" hood ornament on Nash automobiles in the early 1950s. He died in San Pedro, California, in 1975.

Collectors also tell two stories about him worth passing along as the lore they are: that he judged the Miss America pageant in the late 1930s, and that in 1939, Princeton students voted him their favorite living artist, ahead of Rembrandt. I like them too much to leave out.

🔧 Two Companies That Also Wanted a Piece of Her

The Ridgid Tool Company started in 1922 in North Ridgeville, Ohio, founded by Carl Ingwer Sr., William Thewes, and Arthur Smith on the strength of a single product — the heavy-duty pipe wrench that's still the company's signature tool. They moved a few miles down the road to Elyria, Ohio, in 1943, and the company became a subsidiary of Emerson Electric in 1966. Petty painted calendar art for them, and Series I's random insert card is a nod to that relationship.

Jantzen has an even longer pedigree. It started in Portland, Oregon, in 1910 as the Portland Knitting Company, founded by John and C. Ray Zentbauer and Carl Jantzen, making wool sweaters and hosiery. A member of the Portland Rowing Club asked them for a rib-stitch rowing trunk that wouldn't sag on a cold morning on the Willamette River, and by 1916 that swimwear line carried the Jantzen name. Their "Diving Girl" logo — a red one-piece bathing figure caught mid-dive — debuted in 1920 and was, by an independent trade survey in 1931, the seventh most recognized trademark in the country. Series II's insert card is Jantzen's side of the same story: a swimwear company that leaned on the same airbrushed glamour Petty was already known for.

21st Century Archives paired these two Petty sets with a Vargas line of its own — Alberto Vargas's Pin-Up Girls came out in 1992 and 1993, so anyone chasing both artists from this era has a companion set to look for.

📇 The Full Set

Between the two boxes you're getting the complete Petty Girl run — 100 cards total, drawing on Petty's original commercial work across the 1930s, '40s and '50s.

📦 The Condition

Both boxes are Factory sealed, New Old Stock — never opened, still in their factory shrink wrap. Neither series has been opened or picked through.