So here was your first clue to this week`s theme. Of course the answer was the word "Stars" which are probably the thing you are most likely to see when you look up into the night sky - there being approximately two hundred billion trillion of them.
Stars, to us are tiny twinkling points of light, that look like little glowing bulbs in a black curtain. However their appearance to us is as a result of their great distance. If we were able to get close to them we would seen retreat or be burned, for they are very large, and constructed of the gases helium and hydrogen, making them a teeming mass of combustion.
The largest star used to be called Uy Scuti, and it measures over a billion kilometres across. However now we know of one even larger, called Stephenson 2-18. Whilst the hottest star, Wolf-Rayet 102, is almost forty times hotter than the Sun.
Look up, and be amazed at the things we still do not know and cannot even imagine.
This set only appears to appear in our updated British Trade Index, where it is described as
Football Stars (AD) (H) 1957. 69 x 37. Black portraits, varnished. Nd. 48. Nos 1/8 singly, 9/48 in horizontal strips of four. THO-280
Of course (AD) is Adventure Magazine, which is our version, and (H) which is Hotspur. And as I suspected, the cards were split between the two magazines, thus making you buy both to get the full set.
And the reason for the black edge markings is that this was in one of the strips of four.
You can read more about all of the Thomson footballer sets at Football Cartophilic Exchange / Thompson
As for our man, Danny Malloy, he started at a team called Camelon Juniors, and then moved to Dundee FC, where he became the captain. He died in 2015, aged eighty-four.
He appeared on several trade cards, most of which you can see at DoingThe92/DannyMalloy - and though the 1957 Barratt & Co. "Famous Footballers" (A5) is often quoted to be his rookie card, the first card listed here was two years earlier. And appears to be the only one which shows him in his Dundee strip.
Another card to look out for is the 1961 Barratt & Co. Set of "Famous Footballers" (A9), for there is a misprint which seems to somehow have printed the A9 version with an A8 instead