The first clue may have been one of the teams pictured, France - for several reasons.
1. France is one of the most frequent winners, with five victories, starting in 1958 with film star Andre Claveau
2. Andre Claveau was the oldest winner, at forty six years old. And he would remain the oldest winner until Toto Cutugno won for Italy in 1990 aged forty seven.
3. The first winning song was sung in French, by the Swiss Lys Assia.
However we would have accepted the team of Youri Djorkaeff, pictured, Inter Milan of Italy because Italy was also in at the start of the event, and has won three times, starting with Gigliola Cinquetti in 1964.
This set does not appear in any of our British Trade Indexes, and it is definitely too late to be included in our updated British Trade Index, because that stops at 1970. However I have worked out that there is enough space in the coding system of our original British Trade Index part four to give it a number. This was not so easy as I had thought because there were two sets issued in the same year, the other being the black backed version of Pyramid Power. However we already have BRM-76 (The Diary of Kevin Tipps) in the British Trade Index, so the chart I have come up with is :
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BRM-77 : 40 Years of the Chimps (1996)
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BRM-78 : Pyramid Power red back (1996)
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BRM-79 : The Wonderful World of Kevin Tipps (1997)
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BRM-80 : International Soccer Stars (1980)
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BRM-81 : Pyramid Power black back (1980)
Unless anyone has another suggestion, of course?
The cards are large in size, at 89 x 63 m/m and the backs are printed in green.
The two cards that are most sought after are card 17, David Beckham and card 20, Zinedine Zidane.
There is also an error card to keep an eye out for, that is number 5 which shows Brian Laudrup of Denmark, and you can find this card showing him either wearing white shorts or red ones. I am not sure which pair is right, so please enlighten me if you know.
As for storage, there was an album and a wallchart available for this set, which you could obtain by sending a £2 cheque directly to Brooke Bond.