Card of the Day - 2023-04-29

The first clue this week should have led you to one of the teams pictured, Italy, because Valentino was born in that country on the 6th of May 1895, at a place called Castellanata.  His birthname was Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella. His father was also Italian, a military man and a keen horseman, in fact he was a Captain in the Italian Cavalry, but sadly he died when Rodolfo was just eleven. 

Once Rodolfo left school he went to agricultural college, and then he seems to have spit his time between Italy and France where his mother had been born. He found it hard to get employment, so he decided to move to America. Strangely there was either a mix up with his papers or he just forgot to send them in, and he never became an American citizen, though it is possible he might have decided to do that later on.

Now we have fun finding out about these cards - and, after some digging, and a lot of help from a Maltese Collector, the truth can be revealed.

The first puzzle concerns the date, because as they are undated, and seem to follow the reverse designs of the 1930s European cards, you will often see them listed in dealer`s catalogues as having been issued in the late 1930s. But the date of issue was actually 1957, and they were taken from original photographs of the late 1930s. Apparently this was indeed planned to be series A  and to cover the time from the 1930s until the start of the Second World War. Then Series B was intended to cover the 1950s and so on. However for some reason only series A was ever produced. 

As to our next poser, the identity of the Tip Top Sales Company, well they were based in Valletta, Malta. The proprietor was Joseph Xuereb, and he was born there in 1931, however he emigrated to Canada in his early twenties. Nobody seems to know what he did in Canada, but in the mid 1950s he decided that he did not want to stay and came home. He opened a shop called Tip Top in his home town in 1956, after seeing the start of the tourism and holiday industry and knowing that there would be a market for small inexpensive souvenirs. We do not know what happened then, either the business started to slump, or he got tired of the souvenir industry, but what we do know is that he wrote to Japan and started to import radios. This led to the end of the souvenirs, and to the start of what would become his electronics empire, for he rose to become the number one electrical store on the entire island of Malta, and even cleverer than that, when he started to import these items he had inserted a clause in the contract that he was to be the sole agent for each product. 

And they are still in business today. 

Our card is captioned "Jacob retrieves a serious situation" but only tells us it was Germany v Italy, in Berlin, and the score was 2 - 2.  I have scoured the internet and have discovered that on the 15th of November 1936 Italy played Germany for an International Friendly, in Berlin, at the Olympia Stadion. The final score was also 2-2. However this ruins the date of 1932 that is usually given for this set.  The goalkeeper in this match was Hans Jakob (not Jacob as it says on the  card). I actually found him long before I found the match and discounted him because though he was a very successful player all his stats were too late for 1932, which is when this card is usually listed as having been issued. He played almost forty matches for the German National Squad, and was in the 1934 and 1938 World Cup teams, as well as in the 1936 Olympics.