So here we have something which everyone associates with curry - but wait - for it has not always been so. In fact it was the Portuguese who added it, when they arrived in India with Vasco da Gama in 1498.
That was not so long after they had been introduced to the chilli spice, for it only arrived in Europe in 1494, and it started off as just a pretty garden plant with long red "flowers". We can thank some unknown monks for being either brave enough or foolish enough to see whether it could be cooked. Reportedly this act was a simple case of running out of their usual black pepper but maybe not - for we know that peppers of all varieties were used for medicinal purposes in ancient times, and that religious orders were quite well up on such knowledge.
In any event, chili came to Britain in 1548, from India, and about a hundred years later it was already known about the pungency of the scent, as well as not to touch your eyes, etc, after touching the plants.
Our card shows the country, not the plant, but those "feathers" in the hair do look very much like chillies, and they are the right colour too! And the truth is that we do not know exactly where chillies first came from, only that it was somewhere in Chili peppers are believed to have originated somewhere in Central or South America and it seems to have narrowed down to Bolivia. However look on a map, and Chile is right next door.....
There are three printings of this set, which are described in our World Tobacco Issues Index as :
COINS OF ALL NATIONS. Sm. Bkld. (50) See ABC/72. Ref USA/72.
A. White background. 43 known
B. Shaded background. 34 known
C. Shaded and stippled background. 11 known.
I will see if I can find out which cards these were. In the mean time there is a gallery of the entire set at the Trading Card Data Base / Duke / CW
Actually this information about the backs was repeated, or maybe first stated, by Jefferson Burdick. He catalogues this set as :
72. Coins of All Nations.
a) white background
b) shaded background (two varieties for some). About 90 different known in both types.
However he did not value them very highly, just ten cents a card.
By the time of our updated World Tobacco Issues Index there seems to have been some changes. That lists the total numbers slightly differently, as :
COINS OF ALL NATIONS. Sm. Bkld. (50) Ref USA/72.
A. White background. (50)
B. Shaded background. 33 known [one missing]
C. Shaded and stippled background. 17 known. [six added]
Thirty-three and seventeen are not so many to list, so maybe we could do so here, if you let us know which countries you have in the shaded, or shaded and stippled versions. Maybe there are more than that? Mind you it also might be helpful for someone to also add a guide as to how to tell these apart, but I imagine that the shaded are just grey and the stippled are like lithographs, with little dark and light dots making up the shade?
Before we close, there is something else intriguing about this card, for it gives the name of the Chilean coin as an escudo, which was also a Portuguese monetary unit from 1911 until it was replaced by the Euro. Even weirder, it looks like the escudo was a Chilean monetary unit first.
Any numismatists in the house?