Card of the Day - 2022-03-26

A. Keeping of Fulham Football Club also appears on Ardath “Famous Footballers” as A. E. Keeping and on Churchman “Association Footballers” (C504-410 : C82-32 - 1938) 22/50, which is a great action shot, not just a portrait.  His full biography can be found at wikipedia and this reveals his full name to be Alexander Edwin Michael Keeping.

Our clue was his club, Fulham Football Club, which is the nearest ground to the start of the Boat Race, in fact if you watch the race on television (rather than tuning in on the radio, like me) you will clearly see it passing by.

There is something on our card that younger readers might find amusing, and that was that Mr. Keeping, despite his International fame, was also still “engaged in the motor trade”. In other words he was not a highly paid football star who only plays football and has more than enough to live on, like some are today, he still had to hold down a regular job in order to make ends meet, and in fact if asked he would have almost certainly said his work was with cars and his football was just a hobby. However the wikipedia page reveals that this was not just tinkering, for he reportedly “owned a couple of garages”. I will try to track this down.

This “Association Footballers” set is not to be confused with the set by the same issuer, of exactly the same name, that had appeared in November 1935, but was more widely circulated in 1936. The way you can tell them apart is that the earlier set has framelines separating the text from the sides of the card, and our later set does not. Both these sets were first listed in our Wills reference book part four, as W/134 and W/135.

Our set is a bit different again because it is the Irish version, and how you can tell this is all on the reverses – firstly that they have no brand advertising at the bottom ; secondly that they are not “sticky backs” with pre gummed surfaces ; and thirdly that they do not say “This surface is adhesive …” at the top, instead they say “ALBUMS FOR WILLS PICTURE CARDS CAN BE OBTAINED FROM TOBACCONISTS.” and that was a peculiarly Irish printing. They were slightly more expensive than the standard home issue in the London Cigarette Card Company 1950 catalogue as well – 2d. a card rather than 1d. and 10/- a set rather than 4/6d. 

There is also a curiosity with this set as regards our original World Tobacco Issues Index, for the Irish set is listed apart from the home issue as W62-116 under section 2B, this being for “Issues 1922-1939. Excluding cards with adhesive backs”. The adhesive backed home issued comes under section 2C and has the card code of W62-192, a code which contains the earlier, frameline version as W62-192.1 and the later, non-frameline version as W62-192.2. This system continues into our latest World Tobacco Issues Index, with our Irish non adhesive issue as W675-152 and the two adhesive issues as W675-235.1 and W675-235.2. Another oddity is that this page of text suddenly tells us there was no album issued for the non-frameline set. Bit of investigation due on that, I think! 

In between these two sets, other sets were issued – in fact, across the Wills brands, and counting large and standard sized cards, there were twenty-five new sets to collect in those three years. That is almost certainly the reason why the 1920s and 30s are referred to as the golden age of card collecting!  

In our original Wills reference book RB.19, which is part five with revisions to the preceding volumes, this is the last set listed in the section showing the dates of home issues. The book was issued in 1951, so at that time cards were still not yet back in the packets. However three standard sized sets and one large sized set were prepared in the 1950s and not issued, these appear in our most recent World Tobacco issues Index. The standard sized ones were W675-786, “Life in the Hedgerow” a set of fifty cards, W675-788 “Military Aircraft” (which says “reprints only studied”) another set of fifty cards, and W675-790 “Pond and Aquarium” (which says there was to be a first and second series each of twenty-five non adhesive backed cards – though one card has turned up from the first series which is on thinner card and also adhesive backed.) The large sized set was W675-792“Puppies” by Lucy Dawson, a charming set of forty cards measuring 79 x 62 m/m. One of these appeared in our auction not so long ago. I must have the image and will add it. 

Of course in the 1980s Wills issued larger sized sets with Embassy branded cigars, and continued into the 1990s with Castella branded Cigars. And this is getting longer by the minute so I will halt there….