Newsletter - 2022-07-23

Saturday, 16th July 2022

Here we have Paul Mariner, former Plymouth, Arsenal, Portsmouth, Ipswich and England striker, who scored the crucial goal that took England into the 1982 World Cup, and who was in the Ipswich 1978 FA Cup and 1981 UEFA Cup winning teams, won thirty-five England caps and scored thirteen goals for his homeland, but died aged just 68. 

The single code on this card comes from our original Trade Indexes, for it is too late for the modern volume which ends at 1970.These cards do not actually say Topps on them, they say "1981 T.I.L." They are unusual because when they were issued it was as sixty-five cards each measuring 63 x 89 m/m, on which were three cards separated by perforations, and the idea was to cut them into separate narrow cards each measuring 63 x 30 m/m. There are also eight players that appear twice, but I have not worked out who they are yet

Sunday, 17th July 2022

This is our earliest card of the week - and it was issued even earlier by Allen and Ginter, four years earlier, in 1889, as small and large backlisted cards, as well as in the form of a pre-printed album.

Our American Tobacco Company cards also come in two formats, a thick card, issued in 1895, which is backlisted, telling of all the cards that can be collected, and a thin card, issued in 1900, with the `Green Net` design that we show here.Jefferson Burdick regarded the thick cards to be more valuable, but only a little, he has them worth 15 cents rather than 10 cents

As for the crab depicted, I have no idea. 

Whilst researching this I did find a fun fact, and that is that several American states, and the District of Columbia, have not just state flags and state flowers but also state crustaceans - and some of them are crabs, namely California and Oregon (both having the Dungeness crab), and Maryland (with the Blue Crab). Most of the others have chosen shrimp, but the crawfish was selected by Louisiana and the lobster by Maine. And the District of Columbia really pushed the boat out and went for Hay`s Spring Amphipod, though there is a good reason for that, as it can only be found within the immediate area, and only in one spot, a branch of the Potomac River called Rock Creek.

Monday, 18th July 2022

Here we have the cuttlefish, looking rather startled. Perhaps he has just found out he is destined to end up being slowly gnawed up in a budgie cage, poor thing. 

Cuttlefish are actually invertebrates, not fish. In fact if you look at them scientifically they are molluscs, and they are related to squids and octopi, which must have been what the artist of John Player`s "Fishes of the World" was thinking of when they started drawing theirs. In fact that card, which looks like it is the oldest cuttlefish card ever issued, for it dates from 1903, has a lot of things wrong, not just the picture, but the text, which tells us that "Some species grow to an enormous size, with thick body 14 feet long, arms 10 feet, and tentacles 24 feet in length, armed with large suckers Such monsters are easily capable of killing a man, or sinking a large boat". in actual fact, though, the largest of all the cuttlefish is the Giant Australian Cuttlefish (Sepia apama), which only grows to twenty inches; even with its tentacles at full stretch it only adds another nineteen. 

However though the cuttlefish is part of the octopus family, it alone has what we know, after its death, as a cuttlefish, the strange spongy centre shell which acts as a flotation device. And, for such a basic creature, it is an engineering marvel, for within that hard shell are tiny chambers, each with a miniature pump that takes the water out and replaces it with gas, a lighter substance, so that the cuttlefish can rise to the surface, and then, even more magically, taking the gas out and replacing it with water, a heavier substance, when they wish to descend. 

Tuesday, 19th July 2022

Hawksbill turtles live in both tropical and subtropical waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. They roam far from home and commute between feeding sites and nesting grounds, because the female turtles nest on the beach where they were born, mostly this seems to be in Nicaragua and El Salvador. They are named after their pointed, bird-like beak, and they are one of the few animals to eat marine sponges

Human beings get in the way of this idyllic life; they steal their eggs, hunt them for meat, and are most enamoured with their shells, which are brightly coloured and which we call tortoiseshell. And we also kill them by trapping them in fishing nets.

This is a really unusual set and the pictures are wonderful, though the large size always makes for better pictures, don't you think? And that's not a mistake, by the way, for the date of issue, right down to the very day was actually recorded in the London Cigarette Card Company's "Cigarette Card News Magazine" in 1933. 

The first mention of this new set in our literature is in our original Players Reference Book RB.17, where it is described as

10. 25 AQUARIUM STUDIES. Large cards. Fronts in colour. Backs in grey with descriptive texts. Home Issue. September 1932." 

 As usual by the time of our original World Tobacco Issues Index in 1956 this had been reduced to "Lg. Nd. (25)" - which tells you why our original checklist style books are so sought after. And our most recent World Tobacco Issues Index repeats this basic information only, but gives us a new code.

The hawksbill turtle also appears in a trade set, "Wonders of the Deep" which was issued by several tea companies, namely Wilcocks and Wilcocks of Exeter (WIA-8 : WIL-090) & Browne Bros Ltd of Southend (BRO-930 .: BRT-9) both in 1965, Northern Co-operative Society of Aberdeen (NOI-7 : NOR-310) in 1966, H.E. Empson & Son of Birmingham (EMP-210 : EMP-8) in 1967 and even Polar Products of Barbados in about 1970, which has no code as our Trade Indexes are U.K. only.

Wednesday, 20th July 2022

The pipefish is a long, narrow tube-shaped, colourful sea creature, with a flexible tail with which it can anchor itself to objects below the sea - just like the seahorse family, of which it is a member, in fact it is often unkindly referred to as a seahorse, straightened out. 

The London Zoo Aquarium was first built in 1853, by Philip Henry Gosse, not just an architect but a specialist in marine life with a large collection. His design was spectacular, with huge plate glass windows giving maximum exposure to the creatures within, most of which were from his own collection. He also invented the word aquarium, taking just the front and back from the Zoo's own rather unwieldy suggestion of Aquatic Vivarium.

That building was replaced in 1923, with a grand opening by King George V and Queen Mary. This is probably what gave the idea for these cards. The design made maximum use of rather limited space, and extended down and underneath the animal enclosures.

However like its contemporary, Wembley Stadium, there was a limit to how much the concrete it was built in could endure, and in 2019 it was closed to the public for the final time. New plans are to reopen an aquatic facility of some kind elsewhere in the grounds, but there is no word on whether the vacant and crumbling aquarium will be demolished. 

Thursday, 21st July 2022

Ah the flying fish - but the truth is that, despite their name, they don't really fly, they are just so streamlined and such a perfect shape that when they leap up out of the water their motion, and their long wing shaped fins, carry them forward for a short distance. Of course it is probably the fact that the fins look like wings that make them appear to be flying, because we don't expect a fish to have wings at all. 

The reason why they fly is rather a sad one, for they leap upwards to escape predators attacking them from below - and when they are above the water they get spotted by birds looking for their dinner. Their wondrous gift therefore is not, for makes them doubly vulnerable. 

By the way they are also known as "Flying Cod" - but that doesn't have quite the same appeal, does it! 

The first representation of this curious creature comes courtesy of Duke, whose "Fishers and Fish" concentrates more on the fisher, a lady in a red outfit and a jaunty red jockey cap, perched on top of a head which is so much larger than her body that she would always be tipping forwards and landing on the floor. The fish is tiny in comparison, but its fins are outstretched as it dangles at the end of a hook on her fishing line. That was issued in 1888, and the same year Duke, making the most of its payment for the artwork, uses the identical picture as part of another set, "Fishes and Fishing", combining our lady and fish with a card of a Pompano fish and filling in the rest of the card with a sailing ship, a buoy, and what looks like a spar from a shipwreck washed ashore. 

For the first Flying Fish to not dangle from a hook we have to wait another year, 1889, when Allen & Ginter issued "Fish from American Waters". 

Friday, 22nd July 2022

This card is included because people think marine life is only the huge mammals that roam the open seas, but it goes right down to these little guys here, who are generally known by the single name of plankton.  

The name plankton was given to them by Victor Hensen, a marine biologist, in 1887, and it is a corruption of a Greek word, "halyplankton" and it means a drifter or wanderer, not in the sense of someone who comes to town and breaks several hearts and then one morning there`s just a space in the field and not a camper. In the sense of these creatures it means that they have no active means of propulsion, they are driven hither and yon by the wind and by the currents in the water.  And they are everywhere in healthy water, from the wideness of the ocean to the mouth of the estuary of any size of river, saltwater or freshwater, rivers that go to the sea, or inland lakes. And they also live in different parts of that water, some float along the top and others are right down amongst the soil in the bottom strata. 

Strangely we also know that they are also found in the air, and not just because the sea spray sends them up there in inclement weather - they come from dust, and sand, and are also often seeds of land based plants, though they can be bacterial and cause viruses and diseases. And we also know that the air plankton can fall in the sea and be swept along to other countries, many miles away. 

As for their size, most are less than a millimetre across, and they can only be seen through a microscope. Their main purpose was once thought to be eaten by slightly bigger fish than them who hope to get bigger, but today we know that they have a far more important role than that, for they produce oxygen through photosynthesis, they store carbon, and they recycle nutrients.

This Dutch version of the set is quite unusual, you usually see the French and German ones. The cards show sea plankton, hence the title "Het Zeeplankton" and they are : 

1. Diatomeeen
2. Peridieeen
3. Copepoden
4. Globiginia en Radiolaria
5. Larvaire vormen
6. Weekdieren en Wormen