Card of the Day - 2021-12-21

These cards are very slightly larger than what has come to be regarded as standard cigarette and trade card size, being 69 x 37 m/m as opposed to the normal 68 x 36 m/m. As to why this was originally coded as SUM-27 our original British Trade Index (part one, issued in 1962), it is because these cards were listed under "Sumner's Typhoo Tea", as several of the sets carried that name. This has now been dropped, though there is a cross reference between Summer's Productions and The Sun newspaper that says "Sumner's Ty-Phoo Tea - see Ty-Phoo Tea". (Actually there was also a link from Typhoo to Sumner's in the original works)

The more eagle eyed of our readers may also be wondering what the number is on the front of the card; in this case it is "654" and it is actually a printer's number, which several collectors believe is a kind of date code, though some sets also add a date. These standard-ish sized cards were issued, for the most part, before the arrival of the very long cards, the first of which was "Animal Friends of Man" (1927). The only exception is the "Zoo Series", which is cited as having been issued in 1932. The long cards were still being issued in 1939, that set being "Important Industries of the British Empire". A short while after, the Second World War would lay waste to most of those industries, to the British Empire, as it functioned at that time, and also to Ty-phoo Tea, whose next sets, the so called package issues, did not arrive until 1955.