The third clue was the picture of this card, which shows Dublin. For the most successful entrant ever is Ireland, with seven wins, even though their first appearance was rather late - it was in 1965.
Their first winner was Dana, in 1970.
In addition all but one of the contests they hosted as part of their prize have been staged in Dublin, which makes them the record holder as to the most number of Eurovision Song Contests to be hosted in one place.
They also hold another record, because they won three events in a block, 1993, 1994 and 1995.
Sadly they last appeared in the top five in 1997. And their most recent top ten placing was in 2011, when they were represented by Jedward.
This is quite a scarce set, mainly because it was only issued within Ireland. You will find it listed first in our Wills Reference Books, as W/244 and that has the fullest description of :
25 IRISH HOLIDAY RESORTS. Fronts printed in letterpress in colour. Back in green with descriptive text. Irish issue. 1930.
Now usually the month of issue appears in our combined volume of all the Wills booklets when they were reprinted under a hard cover. However this set is not there, it falls in the gap from June 1929 until March 1934. I do not know why this gap is there, it only affects the overseas dates lists. But I imagine they were not printed in the Wills Works magazine for some reason and so have been lost in the mists of time. And because this was an overseas issue to all intents and purposes it does not appear in my London Cigarette Card Company catalogues which sometimes come up with dates I am short of
In the World Tobacco Issues Indexes the text has been truncated and is simply "IRISH HOLIDAY RESORTS. Sm. Nd. (25) Irish Issue."
And as for the reason we have this card this week, check out our "Theme of the Week" Solution at