This card was not only supplied by CardhawkUK, but it is currently for sale, so if you like the look of it, it could be yours!
According to the wording on the back "The Celebrated Play Up Football Cards [are] Printed and Published by W. N. Sharpe, Chromo Litho, Bradford the largest Football Card Printer in the World". Now we are not entirely sure that the final statement is true, as there were several printers of football cards, most notably John Baines of Manningham (also in Bradford), and James Briggs, of Leeds, and we also know that although Mr. Sharpe was in business before those companies, they both started producing sporting cards before him. In fact in his rather grand title "W.N. Sharpe, manufacturing commercial stationer, letterpress printer, lithographer (chromo and commercial) and account book maker" you will note that there is not a word of collectable sports cards.
We know that he started out in 1874 at a small shop at number 6, Piccadilly, then he moved to number 39, Kirkgate, Bradford, and that he also had works in Thornton Road. After his move he offered a range of family and business stationery, as well as notebooks and other leather goods. The works would eventually expand to cover numbers 151 - 157, so were of a considerable size, and here he did all the printing and book making.
In the mid 1930s, they expanded again and had a new headquarters and factory built in Bingley Road, mainly because they had become involved with the printing of greetings cards. This did not last too long though, as the Air Ministry took over the factory during the Second World War. After the war, cards again flew out of the factory - right until 1984, when they were bought out by Hallmark. But today the factory is converted, to housing, and the printing of cards, etc, will one day be a distant memory, despite the builders` attempts to immortalise them by calling it the Printworks development
Now you would expect this set to be listed in our original British Trade Index, especially as its actual name was the Index of "British Non-Tobacco Issues Up To 1945", but you would be wrong, as though W. N. Sharpe are listed, it is only with a set of postcards called the "Patent Fab Cards". That suggests two theories, either that they were not thought to be cartophilic, or they had not been discovered by card collectors yet, though they may have been known by football collectors. The first of these thoughts is ruled out quickly, though, as J. Baines, also of Bradford, is there; not just in the book, but described as "Cards sold in packets over period about 1880s to about 1919", which technically makes them commercial and not cartophilic, hence our cards would be no different.
However our cards are not in our second volume, either, now titled "British Trade Index part two". In fact they wait right until our British Trade Index part three, published in 1986, to make an appearance, and then it is shockingly scant, for it reads :
- Play Up Football Cards. Various shapes. Two known ... SHD-2
- Grimsby Town
- Milnbridge
What this entry does, though, is prove that these cards were indeed unknown until some time between 1969 and 1986. And all I know about Milnsbridge was that they were in the Huddersfield Area.
Anyway once they were listed other cards were obviously unearthed, and in our British Trade Index part four there is a very healthy list indeed, which reads :
- SHD-2 (Play Up Football Cards). Five groupings :
- Back headed "Puzzle No....." 6 known :
( 6) ""Well Played Mossley", portrait "G.H. Taylor"
( 13) "Kendal Hornets", portrait "J.H. Thompson
( 44) "Well Played Radcliffe", portrait "Alf Buxton"
(161) ""Play Up Cardiff", portrait "U. Barnes - Capt"
(174) "Play Up Morecambe", portrait "Codd. - J.D. Crock"
(192) "Play Up Cheetham Hill", portrait "R.A. Cowman - Capt"
- Back headed "Registered Designs - Copyright - The Celebrated Play Up Football Cards" - 3 known :
1. "Gloucester" - portrait "Albert Collins"
2. "Going for a Try - Stockport"
3 "Shield Winners - Bradford"
- Back headed "Sharpe`s - Copyright "Play Up" Regd. 11872". 1 known :
1. "Well Played - Grimsby Town", picture "A Throw Out"
- Back headed "The Celebrated - Play Up Football Cards". 4 known :
1. "Bravo Halifax - Good Old Cup Winners", portrait "Ripley"
2. "Play Up - Darwen", portrait "H.E. Briggs"
3. "Play Up - Kendal", portrait unnamed
4. "Play Up - Milnsbridge, no portrait
- Back headed "The `Floral` Football Card". 1 known :
1. "Play Up Stockport County", portrait "J. Birchenall"
None of these fit our card, and that was the final volume of the original set of the British Trade Indexes. Worse than that, when the updated version was issued in the year 2006 there was a bit of a surprise, for under W. N. Sharpe, all that appears are the "Patent FAB Cards" - and, sadly, the subtitle beneath the issuer`s name reads "Printers. Issued 1905-1907. Also issued "Play-Up" football cards, as those issued by Baines. These are classified as Commercial, and are not covered in this volume."