Newsletter - 2022-03-12

Today in 1978 a nineteen year old American called Eric Heiden glided into the record books, skating a thousand metres in 1.14,99. As a numerically challenged person I have no idea of how long this was, its surely not a minute and fourteen seconds so it must be an hour and almost fifteen minutes.

He is immortalised on Brooke Bond “Olympic Challenge” issued in 1992, where it tells us he was the “First Competitor, in any Olympic Sport, Summer or Winter, to win five individual Gold medals at a single Games”. These were all in speed skating, and unusually mixed disciplines, in sprint and in long track events, and he also set Olympic and World Records, in the five hundred metres sprint, the thousand metres, the fifteen hundred metres, the three thousand metres, five thousand metres, and ten thousand metres. In 1980 he retired from skating, but he did not give up sport, because he became a cyclist, on track and road, even taking part in the Tour de France.

He became a surgeon in the 1990s, but also served as the doctor for the US Olympic speed skating team from 2002 to 2014. ]

The Trading Card Database shows a number of cards of him, most are American, and that is rather good to see he is still remembered in his homeland, but quite a few of them are different versions of the same card. Anyway it is still well worth a look

Today its National Jewel Day. I have to admit I am seriously not a jewellery person; I used to wear a ring on my right hand purely so I could tell the difference between left and right, but these days I don’t really need to know that sort of thing. And I have an old beat up bit of cord with a metal yin yang symbol dangling off it, I wear that quite a bit, but its hardly “jewellery” asrich folk know it. The point to this unusual meandering into to my off the grid way of life is that I thought it would be interesting to look into something I know absolutely nothing about, and you know what, it was!  

It seems to have started in prehistoric times with stones, shells and even bones, and I imagine much as we do today, we see something that catches our eye and we find a way to use it, whether that be glue it to a book, or to pierce a hole in it and wear it. I'm rather intrigued by the bones, bit gothic there, and it also makes me think, strangely, of The Flintstones, where Pebbles, the daughter of Barney and Betty Rubble, uses a bone to hold up her hair into a pony tail. 

Following the trail, you can see how discoveries of metal, and better crafting processes, plus finding new supplies of precious stones from different parts of the globe (as seen on the reverses of Kinney`s “Famous Gems of the World") all come to change jewellery into something more valuable in monetary terms but much less exciting in the romance stakes than keeping a shell your partner finds on the seashore and wearing it around your neck until the end of time, slowly finding odd bits chipping off until you and they and it all crumble into dust together. 

All this ostentation and finery went on for centuries, with various countries vying as to who had the best gems and the deepest treasure chests, though like Gallaher “English and Scotch Views” card 13 shows us, just like our own Crown Jewels, it is seldom out there in the atmosphere being admired; most of it spends its life locked up behind bars, its glimmer hidden by the darkness. In fact part of one of the gems featured in the Kinney set is part of our Crown Jewels, the Koh-in-oor Diamond which is currently in the Queen Mother’s Crown, but has been used as a brooch for Queen Victoria, and crowns of Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, and The Queen Mother. The only place it will never be is on the person of a King or Prince, for it is said to be desperately unlucky for any man to wear it.

The most interesting time, to me, for jewellery, was in the return to plainness and to symbolism by the Arts and Crafts movement, whose hand made goods also sought to give employment and support to local workers. It did not last long, mainly because the jewellery could be quite expensive. It was replaced by Art Deco, surely the most ostentatious of all styles, and at about this time Carreras issued a set of cards called “Happy Families”, a dual purpose card set and card game, anyway one of the families were the Lucky family, jewellers. Miss Lucky is every inch the 1920s flapper, look at that elongated cigarette holder, and Mrs Lucky is off to play golf – this is a card that appears in few golfing collections, so well done if you have it in yours. 

If you look closely at your cards you will find jewellery is often there on cards of actresses and beauties, our Morris "Actresses" has a string of pearls as a necklace and what looks like a flower brooch made of some white material that could be bone or ivory. 

Since the 1960s, helped by the rise of the teenager, and of cheaper materials like plastic, there has been a larger movement towards what is known as costume jewellery, often bright and always inexpensive when compared to fine work; and at the many craft and artisan markets that are slowly coming back to life, you will find many small businesses and hobby traders who are making beautiful and ethically crafted jewellery much in the spirit of those Arts and Crafters. Why not pop along to your nearest, and see whether something sparkles for you? 

Today in 1885, the comic opera "The Mikado" was first staged at the Savoy Theatre in London. One of the many Gilbert & Sullivan's operas, it has two acts and was amazingly popular, running for almost seven hundred performances at that location alone, and being performed across Europe and America. 

Lambert and Butler`s "Japanese Series" card number 4 actually shows one of the real Mikados of Japan, it corresponds with the rank of Emperor, though Japan has hardly ever extended beyond its own islands let alone controlled an empire. In addition the Mikado was also more of a figurehead than a Chief of State or King. 

Many of the characters in the light opera can be found in John Player "Gilbert and Sullivan", of which there was a first and second series each of fifty standard sized cards issued in 1925 and 1927 and two series each of twenty five large sized cards. These include Ko-Ko, Nanki-Poo, Pooh-Bah and Yum-Yum, plus the Mikado of Japan, of course.

You will also find Rutland Barrington playing Pooh-Bah on John Player "Past and Present" (1916) card 16. 

Beware the Ides of March for they fall today. Well I didn’t know what they actually were either, but it turns out it is just the middle day of the month, and more importantly of any month, they don’t just happen in March; that makes them either the fifteenth or the thirteenth, depending on the days in that month. They were also the final demand date for you to pay your taxes if you lived anywhere under Roman rule.

However the main reason they have been connected with "beware", and with the month of March is that on that date Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, at a senate meeting; it seems to have been a conspiracy of many, not just Brutus, who did the deed. Topps “Scoop” (1954) card 118 says that “He is said to have known of the conspiracy, but did not defend himself”. 

The term “Beware the Ides of March” was actually first penned by William Shakespeare, in his play Julius Caesar, though it is very odd that despite the name, the real star of the play definitely comes over as Brutus, and it even ends with a tribute to him, in which he is called "the noblest Roman of them all". However Julius Caesar comes over much better on cards, and the trading card database  has thirty six cards of him, starting with the 1888 Allen & Ginter card from Great Generals.

A very unusual card of him is John Player “Dandies”, which says that he “is said to have invaded Britain in the hope of finding pearls”, and that he was “the greatest dandy of his time. Famous for his debts and intrigues, his extravagance in buying gems and beautiful slaves was such that he was ashamed to have the prices entered in his diary of expenses.” I have to say this casts him in a much more interesting light, to me anyway..    

Today is National Panda Day. It is slightly confusing as to whether this is only the black and white version, or the red, though the red has its own day on every third Saturday of September.

And there is also a brown panda, only discovered in the 1980s.

It is said that less than two thousand wild pandas are on the Earth. They do not live very long, and they are increasingly moved on or taken away. They suffer from the loss of their habitat, and their beloved bamboo, but they do, incredibly, have the key to their own survival, if they only knew it, because the seeds they chew and leave behind them will eventually make more bamboo and reforest the de-forested areas. 

Few pandas seem to appear on cards. However there is a blue and white one on Carreras Turf package issue set "Zoo Animals" as card 33 where it is called, more correctly than I have, the Giant Panda. And Brooke Bond`s 1994 set "Going Wild" has one in the proper colours, also called Giant Panda, as card 19. This card tells us another reason why they are so scarce, for they only have one cub every two to three years. It does hold out some hope, that they are protected in thirteen scattered reserves in China, and that bamboo corridors were planned to be planted to connect these together.

You will also find the red panda, or cat-bear, in Gallaher`s "Wild Animals" 17/48. To me this seems a totally different species! It is said to be "an excellent climber, spending most of its life in the trees", and "about the size of a fox, with a bushy tail almost as long as its body"

Today we say hello to all our Irish readers, and wish them a Happy St Patrick`s Day.

Strangely the date marks his death in 461 not his birth in 385.

What we do know comes from his own auto-biography, the Declaration; he tells us he was not born in Ireland, but over the water in Britain, to a Roman/British family with a strong religious heritage in the Christian Church. He was then kidnapped and taken to Ireland pretty much as a slave and given work as a shepherd, a solitary occupation where life and death are never far apart, and during this time he either called on his religious ancestry, or it called on him, and he began having visions. One of these told him to run away to the coast and get on the ship that would be sent for him. And when he reached the coast, the ship was there.

So began his journey to becoming a religious man himself, even becoming a Bishop, and to his returning to Ireland to convert the people there.

He also had many adventures, including driving the snakes from Ireland. Churchman "Legends of Britain" 49/50 covers this, as well as telling of his kidnap, though they say it was "by pirates", something that conjures up a different image to me. They seem not to hold much sway with his dreaming of the ship, they just say he escaped. However they go overboard with the snakes, that  "Legend says at that time the country was oppressed by great serpents and a host of loathsome poisonous reptiles." That`s rather over the top, don`t you think? 

To close his story, we have John Player "Irish Place Names", card 12/25, which features Downpatrick, his resting place. 

Now today is also the birthday of our Cotswolds Branch, in 1983. But tune in on Thursday for a little tribute to them ! 

Today is World Sleep Day, so why not take a few extra minutes and be thankful that you have somewhere warm, safe and dry to sleep, for there are many out there in the World who do not, especially right now.

Our card is a bedroom with a difference, and a water bed of a whole other kind, for this is on board a ship, the Canadian Pacific liner "Empress of Australia".

You would never know that there is a grand ocean below this delightful room. You might also not know that this ship has a very exciting story, for she was built from 1913 to 1919 in Germany for the Hamburg America Line and her name was going to be the Admiral Von Tirpitz, though there is another story that she was going to be the Kaiser`s own private ship. Unfortunately she was captured in 1919 and converted into an Allied troopship. After this she was not returned to Germany but refitted for Canadian Pacific, almost certainly a case of War reparation, where any German vessels suitable for making war were transferred into allied hands, and in 1921 she was renamed Empress of Australia.

In 1923 she was in Japan when the earthquake struck, in fact she was damaged whilst in the harbour, but she still became one of the ships used to great effect in the rescue efforts. In 1927 she carried the Prince of Wales to Canada for the Diamond Jubilee. She was also the Royal Yacht for the 1939 tour of that Dominion. And she was a troopship once more during the Second World War, and later, seeing service in many areas of the globe, and once being struck by a torpedo.

She was scrapped in 1952.