I’ve just acquired the one on the upper right (red, gold and silver, with no white). I don’t have the other three for comparison, but if you think most of these books are from the 50s, I’d place this one as the oldest. Probably from the 40s, if not earlier, because of the fourth sentence in the essay “Versatility of Rum,” which begins, “Since Repeal, the mixing quality of Ronrico has become so established . . .” I don’t think you’d find Repeal mentioned in a book from the 40s, and you certainly wouldn’t find it in something published in the 1950s, when the reader might well have been BORN after Repeal. I also think the metal binding and the graphics attest to an earlier date. The “Ronrico Chico” is not well drawn, the face is not as defined as in the later versions, and he hasn’t yet been molded into the “sexy cowboy” figure that would have been popular in the 1950s
Just one woman’s opinion!
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