Card of the Day - 2024-10-04

Thomson Prize Cards
D.C. Thomson [trade : magazines : UK - London] "Q Prize Cards" (1934 ) 6/16 - THO-130 : THO-25.1

Pretty neat, eh !

This front is identical in style to yesterday`s card, but the colour of the background and the cap is different, and where it said "Churchman`s Cigarettes" it now says "Cricket Crests". The back, though, is different, and there are also only sixteen cards in this set, not twenty-five. 

Now "Cricket Crests" is not the title of the set, just this section of it. The whole group is catalogued in our original British Trade Index part I as : 

Q PRIZE CARDS. Sm. 67 x 37. (A), (R), (W). Three sub series. Nd. ... THO-25
1. Cricket Crests. (16)
2. Flags of All Nations (16)
3. Queer Birds (16. 

By the way, before I race on, those initials in the brackets are for "Adventure", "Rover" and "Wizard" magazines, in which these cards were issued.

There is a tantalising idea here, and that is whether the other sections of this set were also based on cigarette cards. If so, it may well be the case that their owners, who specialise in trade cards only, have not got the slightest idea, for the supplier of this scan tells me it came as a great shock to him to find his Thomson cards had a long lost brother in the Churchman set of yesterday.

By the time of our updated British Trade Index, the parts of this set, oddly, have been parted. Our set now appears as : 

CRICKET CRESTS (AD), (R), (W). 1934. 67 x 37. Nd.(17). Note 16 cards, last card being numbered 16 and 17. Q Prize Cards. ... THO-130

The other parts read "FLAGS OF ALL NATIONS (AD), (R), (W). 1934. 67 x 37. Nd.(16). Q Prize Cards. ... THO-245" and "QUEER BIRDS (AD), (R), (W). 1934. 67 x 37. Nd.(16). Q Prize Cards. ... THO-545"