Card of the Day - 2022-05-12

This card shows one of the most useful vegetables, mushrooms, which can replace the texture of meat with little enhancement. There are many varieties, and though you must be careful if you want to pick your own, there are foraging courses which aim to teach you a useful skill whilst having some fun. 

This is quite an unusual card, from the Channel Islands. The mushroom you will most commonly discover in your albums is the W.D. & H.O. Wills one, “Do You Know” first series (W675-165 : W62-127 : RB21/200/188-191 ~1922) 46/50 “Do You Know a Toadstool from a Mushroom?”. I have to say that the truth is slightly less obvious than between this very battered, manky toadstool and the lovely shiny mushroom.

By the way, toads seldom sit about lollygagging on toadstools, for they do not hop, they crawl, and they are also rather hefty around the midriff, which makes clambering a tad uncomfortable for them. Or should that be a `toad` uncomfortable? Dreadful pun, but maybe some of you are smiling, and it is a sad day without a smile somewhere in it. 

So let us start our card chat with a correction to this listing, for it originally read  that the issuer was "Ching & Co"., as stated on the cards, but that were just a brand, belonging to the Jersey Tobacco Company, who took over fellow Jersey tobacco company Simonets in 1936.

Their cards were issued through British American Tobacco, and other sets were issued from 1959 to 1964, these being : 

• Jersey Past and Present (1960)
• Veteran and Vintage Cars (1960) our Card of the Day for the 27th of October, 2022
• Ships and their Workings (1961) see our newsletter of the 4th of February 2023, on Tuesday the 5th of February
• Do You Know (1962) - showing here
• Flowers (1962) see our newsletter of the 5th of November 2022, on Thursday, 10th November
• Jersey Past and Present - second series (1962)
• Around and About in Jersey (1963)
• Around and About in Jersey (1964) - their final issue

After failing after several attempts to find this set in the original World Tobacco Issues Index, I realised, of course, that these cards are too late; that volume was issued in 1956.

Now it turns out that this is a set with many permutations, for there were three sets in all, each of fifty cards, and though our version is a cigarette card, the majority of the issuers were trade companies.

The first fifty were issued by Cooper & Co Stores Ltd of Glasgow, with Coopers Tea (COO-150 : CPD-1 - full set), and by Elkes Biscuits who had three branches, Uttoxeter, Cardiff and Burscough (ELK-020 : ELK-1 - second 25). This was the only set Elkes ever issued.

The second set of fifty is our set, ostensibly by Ching, though they only issued the first half, twenty-five cards. The other issuers were B.T. Limited, a tea merchant, (BAA-220 : AZZ-3 - first 25) Cromwell (or Cromwell`s) Stores, who were actually an off licence in Shepherds Bush, London (CRO-070 : CRU-2 - first 25), Liam Devlin of Dublin, who primarily made or distributed Barratt products in Eire (DEV-050 : DEV-2 - 50), Ovaltine Biscuits (OVA-050 : OVA-8 - first 25), Steve Prior, a bookseller of London S.W.8 (PRI-580 : PTQ-2 - second 25), and Sweetule Confectionery of Manchester and London (SWE-100 : SWA-27 - second 25). If that was not confusing enough the first 25 were also issued by Tonibell Ice Cream, but as "Did You Know?" (TON-030 : TNA-1 - 1963).

Then there is a third set of fifty, issued as a first and second series, each of twenty-five, by Baker Wardell & Co. of Dublin, presumably with “Capital Tea”, but issued in two halves (BAK-140 : BAMF-1) and Gaycon Products, confectioners of London and East Grinstead (GAY-060 : GAY-4)