Now at this point you may well have been searching for a theme to do with Stockport, but it is sheer coincidence that both cards come from that region of the globe. And if you look at the details for R.J. Lea, they actually quote Manchester and Stockport; again a link to our last card which referenced Manchester (United).
This card was a link to the theme, and it supplied us with the “Hammer”, which is actually incorrect, for whilst an auctioneer does wield a hammer, albeit very tiny, it is called a gavel. The same word, "gavel", is also used by a judge, and several other legal officials. Moreover it is often said that the Vice President of the United States of America was the first to use a gavel, during the first U.S. Senate, in New York, in 1789. He did this because the meeting was getting rather rowdy, so he struck his gavel to make them stop and listen. What is seldom said is that before he was Vice President he had been a lawyer, and an attorney, and the gavel would have been a souvenir from those times.
You may not realise this, but in itself a gavel is incomplete - it should also come with a small, typically round, turned block of wood, which makes the tiny gavel sound louder.
The yellow hammer, shown here, is sometimes confused with the greenfinch, but the difference is in the head, which is yellow on the yellow hammer and green on the greenfinch. Our bird is about the size of a sparrow, and sometimes flies with them, but it is seldom seen in towns, preferring the country life, the woodland and the farms.
Twenty two yellow hammer cards are listed by the Trading Card Database/YellowHammer - but ours is not amongst them.
Neither is its appearance as card 16/24 of Fry`s “Birds and Their Eggs”, issued in 1912. You can currently see that at CardhawkUK/LeaEnglishBirds.
This is a very attractive card, set off well by the bright border. It is catalogued only briefly, though, in our original World Tobacco Issues Index, as :
ENGLISH BIRDS. Sm. 66 x 35. Front (a) glossy (b) matt. Nd. (25) … L26-22
And this is the same wording in our updated version of that volume, with just a new code (L250-525)