Our first card shows Martin Stanford Peters MBE, who was born on the 8th of November 1943. He was actually in the 1966 World Cup team, and not just that but he scored the second goal of the four which won us the final against West Germany. And as this card proves, he also played in the 1970 tournament. In total he won sixty-seven caps.
He is best known as a player, but moved about a bit from team to team. His last team was Sheffield United, which he also managed. Three years before he died it was announced that he was suffering with Alzheimer`s, and he died in December 2019. His ashes were interred at the home of his first professional football club, West Ham United, which he had joined in 1960.
Despite the fact that the Daily Sketch was a Manchester paper, which is one of the great homes of football, they seem to have ignored the thought that issuing cards might boost their sales, for they only ever produced two sets, and an advertisement card, dating from 1924 or 1925, which is captioned "I am writing this from the `Daily Sketch` Pavilion, Wembley", the idea being that the writer continued with their own message.
Our set commemorates the 1970 World Cup, which England were favourites to win, and continue to hold the trophy for another four years still. Sadly it did not work out that way, but it still led to a lot of card sets being produced, and that is almost certainly why the Daily Sketch got on the bandwagon.
They are listed in our original British Trade Index part III as :
World Cup Souvenir Cards. 68 x 36. Series of International Football Stars. Nd. (40). Issued 1967.
This is slightly incorrect, definitely as far as the date of issue, for 1967 would have been far too early to hang on to them without distributing them, and we know that the first coupons were printed in the Daily Sketch on the 23 February 1970, which we have taken as the issue date, even though it would have taken a while to get all five coupons and to send them away. Curiously, on March the 2nd, the paper printed a change to the rules, which suddenly allowed you to get the other thirty-five cards, all at once, by only sending twelve coupons. We are not sure why this happened, though we have been told that with all the other World Cup collectables that were flooding the market it was suddenly realised that to have to wait five weeks to get the coupons and then wait for the cards to come back, was too lengthy a process, for the World Cup started at the end of May. This is especially true because the other omission from our listing is under the original terms and conditions, sending up five coupons only got you one strip of five cards, you had to repeat the process seven more times to get them all. These strips then had to be cut to make the separate cards, and that explains why a lot of the cards out there are not cut completely straight. You can also find complete strips, which are rather fun, but not very easy to display.
There was also an album, which cost 1/3d.
The set comprised 33 cards of footballers from English teams, and seven cards of "international stars of World Renown", amongst whom is Pele of Brazil (he is card 35). The other internationals are Paul Van Himst of Belgium (card 34), Luigi Riva (36) and Gianni Rivera (37) both of Italy, Albert Shesterney of the U.S.S.R.(38), and Helmut Haller (39) and Franz Beckenbauer (40) of West Germany. Sadly most of these names are quite unknown to me, though on researching I find out that Paul Van Himst was a player and a manager, that Luigi "Gigi" Riva was considered to be one of the best players of his generation and possibly the best striker of all time, that Gianni Rivera went on to become a member of the European Parliament, that Albert Shesternev is not really correct for his name was Albert Alekseyevich Shesternyov and he is still considered to be the best defender in the whole of Soviet era Russia 1969/70, that Helmut Haller represented West Germany at three World Cups, and that Franz Beckenbauer, who sadly died last year, in January 2024 was one of only three people to lift the World Cup Trophy as a player and as a coach.
You can see all these cards, and in their strips, and even the album, at the Football Cartophilic Information Exchange/DailySketch/WCC
Now in our updated British Trade Index, there are four sets for the Daily Sketch, the advert postcard, a set of twenty-eight dominoes, a set of twenty-eight football transfers showing the 1970 England World Cup Squad, and our set, described as :
WORLD CUP SOUVENIR CARDS. 1967. 68 x 36. Nd. (40). International Football Stars. Issued in strips of five. Five were issued with the album, others obtained by sending vouchers from the "Mail". ... DAI-520
I found that a bit confusing, especially the reference to the "Mail", but it turns out that in 1952 the "Daily Sketch" had been sold to Associated Newspapers, who already owned the Daily Mail. They started printing their new version of the "Daily Sketch" in 1953, so it was very likely that the coupons were in both papers, and that makes the time frame to collect the set a bit shorter.