Now yesterday’s player, Johnny Leach, also appears in this set, but we have chosen to end the week with our most successful women table tennis players.
However, let us start, for a change, with some anomalies.
The first is the title of the set. Now if you look at the bottom of the reverse it says only "SPORTSMAN - SERIES OF 24" but obviously that refers to a single card, not the set (and it is also on our card, which shows Sportswomen). In our original British Trade Index part II it is indeed titled as “Sportsman”, but at several other dealers and sites you will find it called "Famous British Sportsmen". As that does not appear on the cards, I was wondering where it came from, because the cards were not issued in packets, but it turns out that it is on the special album - which intriguingly also says "A First Series of", though no second series was issued.
The second is an even more intriguing fact, because if you look at our card, which was supplied by a reader, it is clearly dated "15 DEC 54", and yet this set is dated 1955 in all dealer catalogues.
Further to this we were advised that an even earlier date exists, on card No.2, of Billy Wright, and that is almost a year earlier, reading "I Jan 54. So does anyone else know of any cards that are dated even earlier than this?
Also they seem to run until June 1956, unless anyone has a later date?
And you can find a checklist of all the cards in this set at the Football Cartophilic Info Exchange/BAC/Sportsman
On today`s card we have the Rowe Twins, Diane and Rosalind. Sadly this card has no text about them - but we can extract some from card 18/20 of the set of "British Sports Stars" by Radio Fun. That tells us that Rosalind Rowe is actually Mrs Cornett, and lots about their sporting prowess. They have been "World Doubles Champions twice and English Open Women`s Doubles Champions for six years running. Won the World Doubles Championship for the first time when they were only 17. Now, at the age of 22, they are regarded as veterans and have played exhibition games all over the world. Rosalind also won the English Women`s Singles (1953 and 1955). Between them they have collected over 150 trophies."
Now in Barratt`s "Goldflake Famous Sportsmen" (1970) we find Diane Rowe alone. But it says that she "still is the No.1 in this country, even though she was winning world titles back in the 50s" It turns out that she was born in April 1933 and got married, in her thirties, to the German table tennis player Eberhard Scholer, after which she competed for West Germany. She retired from playing in the 1970s, she had a small daughter, but she kept on coaching. She died in Germany in 2023.
Her sister Rosalind was older, by ten minutes. She married a doctor in October 1955 and completely gave up the sport. She had four children, and she died in Kent in 2015.
What I did not realise was that their father and uncle were footballers, for Brentford United.
In our original British Trade Index part II our set is catalogued as :
SPORTSMAN. Sm. Nd. (24). Album issued. … BRH-12.
The same wording, just differently coded also appears in our updated British Trade Index. And it does appear that this was the only set that had an album!
We are also told in our original British Trade Index part II that The British Automatic Co., Ltd. issued these cards “as weight tickets, 1946-58” - that they are “Small size 54 x 29 m/m.” and we are also guided to “See Anonymous Set ZB9-37” which turns out to be the Palmistry Chart – and which is included in the main listing of the updated volume. The company also issued cards with wording only, fortunes, horoscopes, quotations, and jokes - though there was also a batch of cards that gave information about the Olympic Games in 1948 and the same idea was used for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952/53.
Our original British Trade Index part III adds in a new discovery, some black and white “British Views”, which were issued earlier, in the 1920s. These have disappeared by the updated version, but another group has been added from the 1930s, these being “Health Hints”
There is a slight anomaly in all these books regarding the dates of operation. because dealers seem to point to the first sets like ours as having been issued in 1948, not 1946. These first two were “British Locomotives” and “History of Transport”. The company then issued at least one new set every year, but not in 1956, and their final set was “Racing and Sports Cars” in 1957.