Card of the Day - 2023-01-09

Anonymous "Lighthouses"
Anonymous [tobacco : B.A.T. : O/S] "Lighthouses" (1926) 8/50 - ZB07-460 : ZB6-43 : W/255.B

This was the most fiendish clue, for here we have the Needles, and needles are another kind of sticker, as in a sticker-in-your-finger. However it is a great test of our forthcoming card index as here we have a companion to a card we featured on the 20th of June , which you can visit at 
https://csgb.co.uk/cardoftheday/2022-06-20  which is the W. D. & H. O. Wills` Three Castles branded version, issued in New Zealand. 

Today`s card actually starts off being listed in our Wills reference book part four, as W/255. It is described as "Fronts printed by letterpress, in colour. Backs in light green, with descriptive text. Export issues, between 1925 - 1930,

  • A) New Zealand Issue "The Three Castles"

  • B) General Overseas Issue, anonymous backs

It next turns up in the British American Tobacco reference book RB.21, issued in 1952, though strangely it is not in the main body of the book, just the index section. However this does tell us that it was issued in 1926, and a place of issue, that being Malaya and the Channel Islands. 

In 1956, our original World Tobacco Issues Index splits the Wills version and our anonymous one rather far apart. You will find ours in the anonymous "Z" section, listed under "Anonymous Issues (1) - with letterpress on backs". Then you have to travel to section 2. "English Language issues without reference to tobacco", and on to section 2C, "Issues 1919 - 1940", and to Section B, "Overseas Issue s through B.A.T.".  If you still have any eyesight left, there it says, under ZB6-43, "Lighthouses. Sm. Nd. (50) See W/255B". Strangely it does not give the "Z" number under the Wills section, that would have saved us quite a hunt! 

In the most modern World Tobacco Issues Index, it repeats what is immediately above, but has a new code of ZB07-460. And it also simply says "See W/255". Again there is no cross reference from the Wills set, but I was able to follow the stages listed above, rather than orienteering from scratch.