This second clue was Nottingham`s most famous cigarette manufacturer, one John Player. However he was not born there - he just came up from Saffron Walden. Nor was a tobacco maker when he came - in actual fact his first shop sold agricultural needs, including manure. The shop did reasonably, but, like all shops, if you do not expand you are gone, so he decided to run a little side line selling tobacco to the gardeners and farmers. At this time the tobacco seems to have been bought in, and not even blended by him. However it seemed to be popular, because in the late 1870s he decided to make his own. This supports the theory above, because he could not ensure the quality and flavour stayed constant unless he did. And also, as a businessman, he knew that if he avoided paying anyone else to get involved or to supply the goods, he would make more profit.
He bought his first factory premises in 1877 and started to manufacture both tobacco and cigarettes. And by 1885 he had been forced to relocate to a bigger factory to keep up with demand.
So this card is first recorded in our original John Player reference book, RB.17, published in 1950. It seems rather curious to me that John Player, one of the largest and best known card-issuing companies, should have had to wait right until RB.17 to become immortalised, but i am sure there was a reason, which one day I will stumble over and all will become clear.
That book records this card as part of the Advertisement Card section, not as a single card. The full description is :
3. ADVERTISEMENT CARDS - 1893-4 Issue (adopted title). Small cards. Fronts in colour. Backs in black. Unnumbered series. 7 subjects seen illustrated in Fig.3 :-
Brief summary as follows :-
I. Head and Shoulder Portraits (all known with both A and B backs, see below)
1. Beauty, facing front
2.Beauty, profile to right
3. "Old Salt." Small clay pipe. No hands visible
4. "Old Salt". Long clay pipe held to mouth in right hand.
II. Posters and Facsimiles of Packings.
5. Girl in brown, three-quarter length. Seen with Back A
6. "Player`s Navy Cut Cigarette Tobacco" tin. Special back advertisement
7. Player`s "Golden Dreams" Cigarette 10`s Packet. Special back advertisementDetails of Backs A and B are as follows :-
Back A : "PLAYER`S Navy Cut Cigarettes - Selling by the Million to the Million - Sold everywhere in packets of 12, and Decorative Tins of 24, 50 and 100. John Player & Sons, Nottingham."
Back B : "Copy of Unsolicited Testimonial : 46 Foxberry Road, S.E. ... May 4th 1893 ... I enclose a photo in which I thought you may be interested - it represents my consumption of your `Navy Cut` for twelve months, viz., Good Friday 1892 to Good Friday, 1893. Every one of the boxes have been emptied and the contents consumed by myself. Is this a record? ... E. S. HOUGH. (The photo alluded to above cannot be reproduced in this space; it however represented 128 empty 2 oz. tins, an average of 5 ozs. Player`s Navy Cut per week). John Player & Sons, Nottingham."
These cards are similar in appearance and format to the early 1893-4 Wills issues (see Fig.28 of Booklet No.14) and, as indicated in the letter-press of back B, were probably a Home issue, 1893-4.
As you can see if you compare our scan of the reverse to the description quoted in our reference books, certain words are missing. Not sure why. However there is a much more burning question and that is why they did not show that photo ? Surely if you go to the trouble of reprinting the letter, and twice mentioning the fact that there was a photo, why not make the front of the card show it ? They just cite the fact that it "cannot be reproduced in this space", which points to size constraints, but there must have been someone, especially at their printers, who could have reduced it to a size that would fit a card. Or did they use it somewhere else, that I have yet to find?
Our original World Tobacco Issues Index has a smaller description, which is :
ADVERTISEMENT CARDS (A). Sm. Unnd. (7). See RB.17/3 and H.338.
1. Head and shoulder portraits (4)
A. Back headed "Copy of unsolicited Testimonial"
B. Back headed "Players Navy Cut Cigarettes"
2. Posters and facsimiles of packings (3)
And the unusual thing here, do note, is that the advert back designs on the head and shoulder portraits have suddenly changed their order. No idea why. .
Now in the updated version, suddenly, there is a bit of a surprise, for the top line states "Sm. Unnd. (8)". This eighth card is added to the packaging tally, not the portraits. And it is revealed in the updated handbook to be a box of Player`s Gold Leaf Navy Cut, with the same back as our featured card.
Though, rather confusingly, the write up says "No`s 1-4 found with two different backs (a) Player`s Navy Cut Cigarettes ..." (b) "Copy of Unsolicited Testimonial..."" - which was a return to the order in which they originally started.