Card of the Day - 2022-03-23

Many people might be surprised that Queen Mary was called The Queen Mother, thinking that the mother of our present Queen was the first to carry the title of “Queen Mother”.

It was a rare title because Queen Victoria was dead when her sons acceded the throne, and there have been far fewer Queens than Kings, unlike in other countries – just look at Adkin & Sons “A Royal Favourite” for HM the Queen Mother of Holland.

In our case Queen Mary was the mother of George VI and Edward VIII, and this set was one of the many issued for the Coronation of King George VI. It is number 57A in our original Godfrey Phillips reference book. I am not sure how to record that number as “P/” is always Player, so as usual when faced with something I don’t understand I make my own word or system up, so now we have Ph for Phillips. (This also explains why all my instruction manuals are still sealed inside their bags long after the machinery they refer to has worn out.)

The reference book tells us that the fronts were printed by letterpress in colour, the backs were adhesive, and that they were issued at home and exported abroad.

There was also a special album, for the standard sized cards – because this set was issued in other formats as well, 57B being a series of 36 cards classified as medium, measuring 61 x 53 m/m and having a squarer appearance, which turn up quite frequently. However 57C is quite a scarcity; these were souvenir postcards, sized at 127 x 89 m/m, and they have no descriptive text at all, they are also titled “To record the Coronation”. And if you are lucky you might find the variant printing of those, which are the same size as these postcards but do not have the postcard format on the back, and these were issued overseas only. 

The 1950 London Cigarette Card Catalogue has the standard and middle sized sets of this issue at 1d a card for odds, whilst the standard is offered at 3/- a set and the medium 2/- (and says that special offers appear in their Abridged Catalogue!) The postcard format cards were priced higher, at 6d a card and 12/6 a set. 

By the time of our most recent World Tobacco Issues Index something really startling had been found out which few people know, and that was that this set was not for George VI`s Coronation at all. What led to this fact was the discovery of a standard sized proof set on which the heads and some of the subjects were different, and this sheet was almost certainly prepared to mark the Coronation of King Edward VIII. If anyone out there found this item, or owns it, I would love to know more, as this would make a most intriguing article for our magazine or website.