Card of the Day - 2023-11-14

Lambert Butler Find Your Way Over
Lambert & Butler [tobacco : UK] “Find Your Way!” (1933) /52 – L073-350.B : L8-48.B : L/46 [RB.9/56]

Lets start the non-clue cards with a map, which is pretty basic, but still manages to show the symbol for a railway which is rather like a zebra crossing, alternate stripes in white and black. I based this assumption on the fact that Ringwood is not shown to be on any line, and in 1935 the whole Ringwood to Christchurch section had been closed. It does seem odd to me that the set does not have a legend, anywhere. 

The first appearance of this set in cartophilic literature appears in November 1933, in the Current Issues section of The London Cigarette Card Company`s "Cigarette Card News", No.2 Volume 1. However it is a less than positive review, only saying :

Lambert & Butler. Map Scenes, Find Your Way. A competition set, not especially noteworthy.

Perhaps this is why it does not have the map symbols?

It takes a while, fifteen years, for the set to be catalogued as far as details, and that is not until our original Lambert & Butler reference booklet, RB.9, published in 1948. Here it tells us that there were actually three versions, which I will summarise as a set of 50 plus a joker (which is catalogued in that booklet as L/44), a set of 50 without a joker all of which have the words “Securely Packed” underlined (listed as L/45), and our set of 50 with two jokers and an overprint on every card to say the series is coming to an end. Our section of the set is described in that booklet as 

46. 52. FIND YOUR WAY! Series of 50 and 2 variations Joker card, both overprinted in red on backs “It is requested that these complete series be exchanged not later than 28th February 1934”. Series of 50 identical to (45), Joker card identical to that described under (44) in (a) black and (b) dark green. 1933

Our World Tobacco Issues Indexes list all three sets under one grouping, but has a different way to tell the sets apart. 

FIND YOUR WAY. Sm. Nd. (50). 49 map sections and Card for solution
A. Set of 50, back with address (a) “Box No. 152, London” (b) “Box No. 152, Drury Lane . . .” Joker card with back in black.
B. Set of 50 as in (b) above, overprinted on back in red. Joker card with back in black or grey.

Now the Joker card is rather plain, and only black and white, but it does give the rules as it were. telling the collector that "Any number of these "Joker" cards may be used to make up your full set of 50. When giving your solution of the routes on card 50, place an X to represent this card. Ask your tobacconist for chart." And the reverse just has a solid black circle at the top surrounding the word "JOKER" in white. However it does tell you that they were offering "A COMPLETE POCKET ROAD ATLAS of England and Wales FREE To Smokers of WAVERLEY Cigarettes."  

You can see card 50 courtesy of the New York Public Library.