Card of the Day - 2022-04-03

The first odd thing about this set is the date of 1928, which was considerably after the First World War but not late enough for the Second. I think what may have happened was that they were designed earlier, but when cards did not return they were left on the shelf, perhaps the brainwave was to celebrate ten years after the end of the War. However I doubt we will ever know for certain as no wording to this effect was added.

The signs and symbols, include some very obscure units, like ours, which is the 22nd  Motor Ambulance Column, whose symbol “.…was the Sphynx, indicative of wisdom combined with silence”.

That sounds a good connection with Churchill, whose speeches sometimes said more in their silences than in their words. However we also have a connection with ambulances, as our first President Charles Glidden Osborne, was attached to the American Ambulance Brigade. 

Of course, our Card of the Day Connection refers to Churchill’s famous Victory Sign (or V-Sign). 

In 1950 these were the lowest priced B. Morris odds in the London Cigarette Card Catalogue, cards being on sale for 1/2d each. The sets were more comparable in value, at 2/6d. though they were one of the sets stated to be on special offer in the Abridged Catalogue. The reason for this was probably that it was a set of 50 cards, so the value of the odds sorted themselves out to the value of dearer ones in the shorter sets which Morris traditionally produced during the 1920s and 1930s, only four sets of fifty cards being issued as opposed to eleven sets of twenty-five cards, plus a thirty-five card set (M884-410 : M142-31 “At the London Zoo Aquarium” – 1924), a twenty-four card set (M884-370 : M142-28 “Shadowgraphs” - 1925), a thirteen card set (M884-380 : M142-29 “Treasure Island” – 1924)  and a twelve card set (M884-540 : M142-39 “Horoscopes” – 1936)