This is a curious little set, really well coloured, and yet I have never come across it before.
Even in our Wills reference book it has but a scant description, of :
- 300 RACES OF MANKIND. Size 62 x 37 m/m. Fronts lithographed in colour, gold background, blue borders. Backs in green, with star and circle trade mark, no descriptive text. General Overseas Issue, between 1905-1910.
When these books were reprinted, as one, beneath a hard cover, in the 1970s, they were enhanced by the addition of a list of dates, supplied from the Wills1 Works Magazine, and that tells us that this set was actually issued after that, in June 1911, which, coincidentally, was the same month as the set we featured yesterday - just in a slightly different part of the globe.
In our original World Tobacco Issues Index it appears under Wills section 5, for "Other Export Issues. Cards without I.T.C. Clause, issued through B.A.T. Small size 67-68 x 36 m/m, and inscribed "W.D.& H.O. Wills", unless stated". The heading for the sub section, 5.A, adds that these were "English Language Issues, 1901-17. Issued chiefly in Channel Islands, Malta, India and Malaya."
Sadly, the entry is even shorter, just :
- RACES OF MANKIND. Sm. 62 x 37. Nd. (50) ... W62-423
And this text is identical in the updated version, apart from a new card code, of W675-602