The reason for us using this card is the team - because Sunderland`s home ground, The Stadium of Light, has a bit of a reputation for spooky goings on - a dim but spectral shape roaming corridors, as seen by a number of players of home and visiting teams, and he has also made several appearances on the football field, touchline, and in the crowd.
Apparently this is supposed to be the ghostly form of a sailor, but there seems no connection with him and football. This man turned up in the town some time in the Eighteenth Century, begging, and when he was followed he was living rough. There was wreckage of a ship cast ashore so it was felt that was his ship. It looks like he was the only survivor. He had no name and spoke no English, and so he was thought to be of unsound mind and pestered relentlessly by the townsfolk. They came to calling him Spottee just because he had a spotted shirt on. But slowly he gained a bit of respect, and was useful at harvest time and other times when local farmers had any odd jobs they did not want to tackle, then somehow he found a more permanent home in a cave by the sea, from where he would sit and wait for another ship to come and fetch him home, perhaps to those he loved, who waited for him too, without ever knowing his fate. This sounds sad and romantic, and definitely at odds with reports that he was known for guiding ships straight into the rocks with his lantern so he could plunder them. Eventually, (OMG can this get any sadder) his lifeless body was found in the cave, which is now locally still called Spottee`s Cave. His ghost has also been reported here, on dark and stormy nights, perhaps thinking that his ship will be resurrected and come to take him home at last.
Life can be cruel sometimes, especially for empaths.
Anyway there is a lot of interesting information already on this set.
Our original British Trade Index tell us that it was issued as sheets, three of twelve cards each and one of fourteen cards. These cards were obviously perforated rather than having a cut line, because you can see that the edges look like a postage stamp. However this card is only perforated on three sides, so it must have been on the bottom row. They also add that the cards measure 66 x 35 m/m.
Our latest British Trade Index backs this up, but adds that the sheet of fourteen cards came first, and it was in a plastic wallet. Presumably this was a wallet in the way of something to store the cards in, but no size is given. So was it a giant wallet to take the whole sheet, which surely would be much too unwieldy to handle, or was the sheet folded inside a smaller wallet? Anyone know? Or even better, does anyone have one to take a photo of and show us?
I have also found the original discovery listing in the Cartophilic World. This appeared in Volume 15, Issue 168, dated November/December 1963 in the "Recent New Issues" section, and it reads:
TIGER (Periodical) "Star Footballers of 1963"
A series of cards issued in sheet form with this periodical, October 1963. There are 50 cards to the set, and when buying the periodical I could not help noticing that 6d. seems a high price for this class of periodical. A high step up from the days when comics were 1/2d and 1d each week. W.M. Wright