So this is a most interesting set, being copies of artworks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and there are a variety of different sports included, including really collectable ones like cricket, boxing, boating, and fishing, plus some of which have come to be seen as less savoury, thankfully.
Pre-War cards has a checklist of the set if you want to see if your sport is included. For this set is seldom made enough of, and so is very often, and sadly, omitted from thematic collections.
The original painting on this card, " Epsom, the Grand Stand", was painted by J. Pollard, engraved by Chas Hunt, and published in 1836. You can see it, enlarged, at the British Museum - where it says it has been housed since 1933, three years after this card was produced. It also says that before that it was owned by Mr. Charles Francis George Richard Schwerdt, who sold his entire collection of sporting memorabilia at Sothebys, from which this item was purchased by the museum, but that is incorrect for the sales were held between 1939 and 1946.
And the link with our theme is that it clearly shows the horses galloping in a very strange style, almost suspended in air with all their legs extended at the same time.
Both our original and our modern World Tobacco Issues Index have the same brief description : "OLD SPORTING PRINTS. Sm. Nd. (25). However the vintage volume ends by saying "See Ha.563" and the modern with "See H.563".Now for the most part there being a handbook reference like that means either that it is an unnumbered set, and the titles of those cards are listed, or it was also issued by at least one other manufacturer. In this case because we have already been told the set is numbered, we expect to see a similar series. And we do, that being Faulkner.
Now this is great, because whilst there was no reference book to the issues of Stephen Mitchell, there was one, the very first one ever, RB.1, to Faulkner. And in there we have the following description :
1930. 25 OLD SPORTING PRINTS (titled series) Size "A". Numbered 1 - 25. Fronts printed letterpress, from half tone blocks; four colours White margins with titles in the margins. Backs, printed in dark grey, with description and numbered. Same as Mitchell. Printed by Mardon, Son and Hall.
We do actually have a month of issue for the Faulkner version, and that is May. This comes from the London Cigarette Card Company catalogue of 1955. However they give no month against the Mitchell version. And 1930 is too early for any cartophilic magazine.
We also glean from the same catalogue that the Faulkner cards were scarcer, for they were listed at sixpence each for odds (or fifteen shillings for a full set), whereas the Mitchell ones were just a penny a card with complete sets at a shilling and sixpence.