22 January - Card Codes now added - and a Zena Skinner Surprise - January is moving fast now, but give it a chance, for it is sure to bring us surprises yet. And with every day that passes we get closer to the light nights and mornings, which allow for more (and some days the only) work to get done.
So what, you may ask, do we have for you this week ? Well we have a cuddly character who is trying to make a comeback, a daring director of more than four hundred films, a culinary creation from the 1960s, a ship that sailed successfully all the way to Newfoundland, a new-fangled notion called a shelfie selfie, a natter about a natterjack and relations, and the calamity of conscription in World War One.
So lets get going!
John Player `Grandee` [tobacco : UK] "British Mammals" (1982) 17/30 - P644-412
Today it is Red Squirrel Appreciation Day, but you will be lucky to see one, though at one time they were the only squirrel we had and they lived in most of our forests. Then these grey squirrels came over from America in the 1800s, and they were actually brought here because the Victorians thought they looked prettier than the greys. The intention was to keep them on private land and in garden estates, but this was easier said than done, and from one or two escaping came the population overload that we have today.
This was also not helped by the fact that it took until 1930 for it to be made illegal to release a grey squirrel to the wild. And this also did not really include them escaping as a non assisted act.
One of the many charities that were set up to encourage awareness of the red squirrel is The Red Squirrel Survival Trust. And they are currently running a photo competition which closes at the end of March and is open to all amateur photographers, with a class for junior photographers. .
You will find squirrels on many cards, and also their decline, for on early cards like the Anonymous B.A.T. "Birds, Beasts and Fishes" the red squirrel is not titled as so, but just as "The Common Squirrel". However in John Player`s "Animals of the Countryside" (1939) it already states that "..it is getting rarer in many of its former haunts". And on our card, issued in 1982, it says "Once widespread in this country they are now restricted to parts of East Anglia and the more mountainous regions..." A sad tale. Let us hope that in years to come cards will say it has been successfully introduced and not it is now completely extinct.
This set does not appear in our original World Tobacco Issued Index, for it was issued almost twenty years after the publication of that volume. And do note that there are two printings of our set. It is easy enough to spot though, by looking at the last three words of the address. The earliest version says "Imperial Tobacco Ltd", whilst the replacement says "Imperial Group plc"
Today, in Floyds Fork, Kentucky, David Wark Griffith was born. His father had been a Colonel on the Confederate side of the American Civil War, a colourful character indeed, or so it seemed, who brought back wild stories of the battlefield with which he would enthrall and terrify his children throughout their early years.
When he was ten, his father died, and the family had to leave their home, moving around and bunking in with a succession of relatives and friends. The young D.W. Griffith had to say goodbye to school and go to work, various jobs, but at last a bookstore, near a theatre. And that was where he knew his future lay.
He started out on the stage, like they all do, small roles growing bigger, but he was also writing stories and turning them into plays. Some of them were just too grand to show on a stage, including many of the stories based on his father`s tales, but he sold some to film studios, including Edison, and this resulted in his first appearance on film, as the leading man in "Rescued from an Eagles Nest", released in 1908. The whole film was only seven minutes long, and there were only four people in it, but it included very early special effects, for the eagle is stuffed and manipulated into action, flying away with the child in its mouth. It may not come up today`s standards but for the time it was very effective, and most importantly led to better things.
He also sold stories to Biograph, who employed him as a director shortly after his first starring role. Here he would make over four hundred films, starting with one where another child was stolen away, this time by gypsies. These were about eight to twelve minutes long, but by the time he left Biograph he was making much longer films, some of over an hour long. And he would also introduce "the close up", where a face or object approached the screen until it filled it, as well as the other way round, "the long shot" following the action away from the camera so that more and more of the surroundings were shown. He was also able to develop the technique of vignetting the action down to a tiny white spot so that the screen went into darkness, and reverse out again.
In 1920 he left Biograph and set up his own studio. However for some reason the films he made here were never as popular as those he had made for Biograph. His final film was The Struggle, released in 1931, but it was not a success. He died on July 23, 1948
Our card is a postcard, which was given away at movie theatres for advertising purposes. Sometimes you find them with advert backs printed on and other times the name of the cinema is just rubber stamped. This one is quite a rare one, and it shows the cast of one of D.W. Griffith`s most famous and most expensive films, "Way Down East", which was released in 1920. The two leads were Lilian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, and they are centred on the card. However this was the third version of the film, taken from a theatre play. And it would be filmed again in 1935 with Rochelle Hudson and Henry Fonda.
Woman`s Realm / Brooke Bond [trade : tea and magazines : UK] "Zena Skinner International Cookery Course" large size (1974) Un/50 - WQM-1
Three cheers for National Pie Day, which is today, and celebrates the covering of pastry over a filling which can be either savoury or sweet. It is an American event, that is every year on this date.
Most pies on cards seem to be issued by firms who either made the pies or made the materials to construct them, flour, shortening, rolling pins etc. In some cases they also issued recipe books, usually these were acquired by sending away coupons from off the packaging. Many of these are in the collected by kitchenalia specialists.
Zena Skinner was born on the 27th of February 1927, and she did not come to fame as a cook until she was in her thirties. Before that, at the end of the Second World War, she had been a WREN, working on secret codes and signals. After the war she got a job as a cookery demonstrator in an electricity showroom, and she was sent overseas, to Africa. Her big break came quite by coincidence, for she met Queen Elizabeth II there on a Royal Tour, and pictures of her cooking appeared in the press. In 1959 she found herself on television, becoming one of the first TV cooks, mainly because she was so friendly, and also she was slow in her delivery which people liked, as it was easy to follow along with her.
These International Cookery Cards were issued in 1974 quite late in her TV career, and there are fifty of them in the set, though there is no mention of this on the card. That is possibly why it is very rare as a complete set, especially in good condition, for it was designed to be used and it was, but it suffered from being used in the kitchen, full of hazards to card health, heat, moisture, flying ingredients, and spillages. They do turn up at internet auctions though, and usually as singles, so it is possible to complete a part set to this day. However they are costly!
One very curious thing has been discovered because I always connect this set with Brooke Bond, but it turns out that our original British Trade Index part 3 has it listed under Woman`s Realm - and indeed if you look on the card there is not any mention of Brooke Bond. However it does not actually say it was issued by Woman`s Realm either, only recommended by them.
If anyone is interested I can scan that listing and add it here, because it does give all the titles of the un-numbered cards.
W.D. & H.O. Wills [tobacco : UK] "Celebrated Ships" (July 1911) 38/50 - W675-107 : W62-74 ; W/56
Today is one of those curious days which celebrate a name, namely National Matthew Day. So if you are a Matthew, go out and celebrate! We had a look round and decided to go off on one of our tangents, picking this card of a ship.
This is The Matthew, or so we are told, for no pictures of her exist, and the only description at the times is that she was a navicula, which is a three masted sailing ship, similar to a caravel, but rigged differently. If anyone out there would like to tell us more about this, please do.
Anyway, in her, in 1497, a Venetian explorer called Giovanni Caboto, and a crew of eighteen men steered his way out of Bristol Harbour towards the great unknown. This is depicted in Wills "Historic Events", issued a year after our card, in 1912.
He had already tried once, but only reached a strange land of ice, which he called Iceland. So back he came, and set out again in 1497 with this ship. In his dreams he was heading for China, but he almost certainly hoped that he would hit something other than ice, or anything solid at all, before he was capsized, for she was a very small ship indeed. Strangely her size is one of the few things that we do know about her, we are not even sure of her name, as she appears as various spellings including Mattew, which leads support to the claim that she could have been called Mattea, the very name of the explorer`s wife.
Just about six weeks later, with the men tired and despondent, a cry rang out that land had been sighted in the far distance. This is depicted on F & J Smith`s "Famous Explorers" 19/50 which tells us that John Cabot was actually born in Genoa, and became a Venetian citizen in 1476. He then came to England, to Bristol, and on March of that year he obtained a patent from Henry VII which allowed him to go out on this trip.
They sailed for all they were worth. And when they got there they found were not in China at all, nowhere near it - but they were in a New World, literally, they had discovered America, namely, as the F & J Smith card tells us, "Novia Scotia and Cape Breton Island".
However that card also goes on to tell us that "he died, whilst on a second voyage to Labrador (1498)". Actually the truth will never be known, for only one of the five ships on this expedition ever turned up, in Ireland, damaged and looking for a safe harbour. The rest of the ships reportedly kept going westward. They were never seen again. And in 1499 John Cabot was presumed to have died.
Ogden`s Ltd [tobacco : UK] "Cathedrals & Abbeys" (1936) 18/50 - O100-492 : O/2-136
Here is a new one to me but it sounds great fun, for today it is National Shelfie Day. The idea behind this is that you take a picture of your library, and share it on social media. So why not!
However I bet not many of your libraries look like this very strange one? For here we have a Shelfie dating from 1936, and this is a great one, showing the Chained Library at Hereford Cathedral. But this view would have looked like this for many centuries, and there would have been many of these places. In fact there are still others in existence, at Grantham, Oxford, Wells and Wimborne, to name but a few - you can see others, including some from Europe, at the AtlasObscura/ChainedLibraries website. However the one at Hereford Cathedral is the only one which remains with all its systems intact and usable.
You can read how those systems worked at the HerefordCathedral/ChainedLibrary website.
As to why this chaining was done, it is said to have been to prevent the theft of books. Now you might think this was rather distrusting of these religious folk, but think how many hours they had toiled to make them, all that illumination with colours, and the beating of the vellum, and suddenly you realise what those books meant to them. However, as always, there are two sides to every tale, and what seems to be very clear is often, if not usually hiding an untruth, though as yet we do not know what that is. We do know that before the Middle Ages, the books here were not chained. That only happened during that time. And also, only people who could read would have any interest in looking at them or in visiting the library, so the idea of a farm worker going into the Cathedral with their muddy boots on and stealing a book to read at home just would not have happened. So there must be a different reason, which is very intriguing....
Now this set was issued in two versions, in our World Tobacco Issues Index it says that these were a) white card b) cream card. But some other dealers list them the other way around so always specify the colour when you are ordering this set.
John Player `Grandee` brand [tobacco : UK] "Britain`s Endangered Wildlife" (1984) 10/32 - P644-402.
Another weird one for you as today is Toad Hollow day of encouragement. It might be weird, but as usual, it has a secret heart of gold that you have to uncover.
It starts with a teacher kindly allowing an elderly student to join his community college. Maybe he knew that she would change his life. And she did, but sadly she never knew it, unless she was watching from heaven. She appeared in a newspaper article some time later, just as he was beginning a new career as a writer, and it said that she had been to school as a child at a place called the Toad Hollow Country School. And he liked the sound of that place, it felt good in his heart, maybe she even sent him down a vision of her as a child, laughing and young. I like to think she really did guide him, for when his stories flew from his fingers on to the paper, and were published, and gained a huge following, many of the readers contacted him and asked how they could visit his town. And he always said that if they looked they would find where it was within their heart.
He loved being a writer, but he also loved people, and his greatest moments were when he went out into a local park and sat and told the stories to people in person. Some of these could not read at all. He felt that this was like being a teacher again, only better.
When the County bought that park, and opened it to the public in the late 1970s, he formed a society to help with the expenses of running it. And to do this he actually built the town of Toad Hollow inside it. It was a huge success and featured local craft workers who taught their skills to anyone wanting to learn. Sadly this only lasted for three years, but the volunteers who worked there were not defeated, and they started touring local schools giving demonstrations and lectures.
They also invented today, the Toad Hollow Day of Encouragement, which was marked as being a day to share kindness, and also to share what we know with each other, that we keep learning throughout our lives and never allow anyone to tell us we are unable to do so.
Our card shows a Natterjack Toad, which is also a survivor. However it is rare, and getting rarer. Like the red squirrel, and me, it is fond of East Anglia. And it likes to live in pools with access to sand or sandy soils. It is smaller than the common toad, but that is hard to gauge if you dont see many toads, so look for the yellow stripe down its greenish back, and also that it has a very strange gait, it neither hops like a frog, nor crawls like a toad, it has a curious running action like one of those old toys with the wheels making the legs appear one after the other. The one time you hear them the best is in the breeding season, for all the males go out together and sing in a band, very loudly, hoping the ladies will find the serenade appealing, and also thinking if a single toad has a voice as loud as that he must be worth looking at.
Yet again this set does not appear in our original World Tobacco Issued Index, for it was issued almost twenty years after the publication of that volume. I have found the original New Issues Report, which appeared in the Cartophilic Notes and News in July/August 1984 (Vol.12 No.126).
W.D. & H.O. Wills `Scissors` brand - India [tobacco : UK] 6/25 - W675-480 : W62-341 : W/133 : H.78
The Military Service Act passed today in 1916, opening the door for conscription of all able bodied men. This was opposed by many, but the numbers which had answered the call straight out, and those who signed up by seeing the posters, or reading of the war in the papers, had dried up. Also, casualties were rising, but this was not exactly broadcast at the time. So the goverment urgently needed some way to increase the number of men going to war. They did this by conscription, making service in the forces compulsory for all men who were unmarried, unless they were unfit, or doing important work at home, which were religion, teaching, and industrial work which was already serving the forces. The latter class suffered badly from abuse from the general public over them being at home not at war, so much so that special badges were produced saying "On War Service" and the workers were to wear these prominently on their person. Some people successfully argued that their morals would not allow them to fight or kill, these were called Conscientious Objectors, and they were signed up but given non fighting jobs, though many were still sent to the war zones.
In 1916 the Military Service Act was altered, including married men. This was again very unpopular.
Ireland never had conscription, though many Irish men volunteered to fight.
Though this card is not actually stated to be new recruits and possibly conscripts, they are erecting that tent under supervision despite the fact that the text says "It is astonishing the rapidity with which these tents are erected". If that was the case why would they need the supervision?
It is also a slightly different one to the Players "Army Life" of 1910 that we all know so well, for this was issued in India, with Scissors Cigarettes. If you look at the front it has no Players Cigarettes on the card. And the back is entirely different, with the slanting packet design. However every word of the main text is identical. And a look through our reference books tells us a bit more. W/133 says that the fronts were lithographed in colour and the backs in red with descriptive text, and it was issued "In the East, about 1910", though 1914 is most often quoted. And it must have been reprinted, possibly causing the confusion over the date, as it can be found printed on a} a white polished board or b) a cream matt board.
It also says that it was also issued by two other companies as well, both in 1915. These were Wm. Clarke of Liverpool and London, who was bought out by Ogden`s in 1924 and moved to Dublin - and W.T. Davies of Chester
This week's Cards of the Day...
have been celebrating the Chinese New Year, which this year will be the year of the Rabbit. It starts on Sunday January 22nd, and Chinese people have seven days holiday from work. However this is not the end of the celebration, because on the last day they take part in a lantern festival, and that will be on February 5th.
If you were born around this time of the year then you may not be a Rabbit at all, for the dates of the Chinese New Year vary, as do the animal that represents it, they are on an ever turning wheel which moves through the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Rabbit, the Dragon, the Snake, the Horse, the Goat, the Monkey, the Rooster, the Dog, and the Pig. The animals also change elements, so this year we have the Water Rabbit. but there are also Metal, Wood, Fire and Earth.
So how did we get to the Rabbit? Well our first clue card was :
Saturday, 14th January 2023
The reason for this card was actually the team mascot, for he is a giant rabbit called Peter Burrow, a play on words for Peter-Borough. He is very famous, selling a large range of merchandise, and even having a twitter site https://twitter.com/peterburrow1934?lang=en so you can keep up with all his goings on - if you are still with twitter of course, for I am not. I have moved to mastodon.
Now several collectors, and sellers, believe this set of a hundred cards to be called "Mirrorcards", and that is rather the fault of the Daily Mirror, who put that in a huge black banner right at the top of the card, whilst relegating the actual title, "Star Soccer Sides" half way down on the left.
The cards measure 76 x 44 m/m so are counted as medium size.
There is a checklist online, at NigelsWebSpace/MirrorSoccerSides where you will discover that the final four cards are of trophies, not footballers.
Sunday, 15th January 2023
This card shows Coney Island, and Coney is another name for a rabbit. How the rabbit and the island became connected is usually said to be because there were lots of rabbits there before they started building.
Coney Island is in New York, and was once indeed an island but silting and assistance turned it into a long peninsula which now includes Brighton and Manhattan Beaches. It was a seaside resort by the 1850s, though that was a slow burn as the first hotel had been built in 1829, and the amusements followed afterwards, starting in the late 1870s, and continued until the Second World War, which almost finished them off. However today it is again a popular area, thanks to it being the location of several cult films.
If you look along the coastline you will see an elephant. This was the Elephant Hotel, and you could stay in one of its rooms if you so desired. The front legs housed a cigar store. It was built in 1885, but it did not last as a plush hotel for very long, falling out of favour and being used for all kinds of purposes before it burned down in 1896.
Kinney Tobacco Company was also known as Kinney Bros, but this card uses the first permutation. They were based in New York. This card measures 68 x 36 m/m, and it is backlisted, which means that the titles of all the cards appear on the reverse of every card. This was quite a cunning ploy, for it instantly provided you with the information to ask for a card by title or to see in advance whether there was a special card that meant something more to you.
By the way, Jefferson Burdick valued them in his checklist as being 15 cents each card.
Curiously there are British Beaches listed in the set. These are Ramsgate - Scarborough - and - Brighton which appear all together below each other at the top of the right hand side, and Torquay which is further below them still. This is because for some reason they have put Torquay in France. I have no idea why this happened, and though I have looked, I have not been able to find any place called Torquay in France - however if you can please let us know.
Monday, 16th January 2023
Our clue was that the player shown here as H.W. Austinwas actually christened Henry Wilfred, and Wilfred was a very popular rabbit in the Daily Mirror, hence the nickname of "Bunny".
As our card says, he was plagued by ill health. It was only discovered during a medical in 1943 that he had Gilbert’s Syndrome, which affected his liver and often resulted in jaundice. He was therefore unfit for War Service.
The card also mentions his sister, Miss Joan Austin, who became Mrs. R. Lycett and appears on Gallaher "Lawn Tennis Celebrities" as card 50/50
As far as the card this is a very interesting story. Our original Churchman Reference Booklet RB.10, which was printed in 1948, gives the date of issue and describes it as
"50 LAWN TENNIS (titled) Size 67 x 36 m/m. Numbered 1-50. Fronts printed by letterpress, halftones in two printings in sepia. Backs in dark green with descriptions. Printed by Mardon, Son and Hall. Also issued by John Player (overseas)."
A couple of years later the Churchman version appears in the London Cigarette Card Company 1950 catalogue as 3d each for odd cards and 17/6 a set. The Player does not, for it catalogued British cards only.
That overseas version is actually in our original John Player Reference Book. RB.17/120 (or P/120). It says that it is
"50 LAWN TENNIS small cards. Fronts in sepia. Backs in grey, with descriptive text. Overseas Issue. August 1928. Similar series issued by Churchman".
The last line is interesting as it shows the Player version was actually issued a month before the Churchman.
Our original World Tobacco Issues Index tells us a bit more about it, that it has no ITC clause, and that it was issued chiefly in New Zealand, Malaya and Siam.
Now if you go back and look closely at the Churchman Reference Booklet, RB.10/90, which directly follows our set, is also Lawn Tennis, but this is a set of only twelve cards, in a larger size, of 80 x 62 m/m. I have not yet found out which twelve appear yet, but once I do they will be listed here. The odd thing is, however, that the twelve were not selected from our set, as it may appear to you, and it did to me. Also this larger sized set was actually issued in July 1928, two months before the small size cards and one month before the John Player overseas version.
We featured the large version of our set as the card of the day on the 28th of June 2022
Tuesday, 17th January 2023
Our original British Trade Index part 2 tells us that this set is small, or standard, size, numbered, and contains fifty cards. It was issued in three formats, the difference being in the issuer`s name.
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Brooke Bond & Co.Ltd. (this being the first printing, and the rarer issue).
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Brooke Bond (Great Britain) Ltd. (the second printing).
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Brooke Bond Tea Ltd. (the third printing, this being the one you are most likely to find).
The same book also tells us that sixteen pictures from this set with backs inscribed "published by courtesy of Brooke Bond Tea Ltd" were used in a "Pick a Picture" booklet issued by the R.S.P.C.A.
Our set was never officially reprinted with a black back for sale to collectors. This seems odd and I have to wonder if they had somehow lost the artwork. Or maybe it was not permitted by either the illustrator, naturalist Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe R.A, or the author of the text, Frances Pitt, (who also worked on their "British Birds" set)
However you can find another printing, as shown by the D.241 and HX.66 codes, because it was issued by Musgrave Bros Ltd of Cork. Tea Blenders.
Both Brooke Bond and Musgrave issued special albums. And you can see a checklist of all cards and the Brooke Bond album, with a red squirrel on it, at BrookeBondCollectables/BWL
B.05 was Brooke Bond`s own code for this set.
You may be interested that when Arthur Brooke started his company in 1845 the name he chose was Brooke Bond & Company. The first tea shop opened in 1869. However there never was a Mr. Bond. Some say it was added for extra clout, some say he was saying his word was his bond, and others say it
Wednesday, 18th January 2023
So here we have another simple rabbit card with a fascinating story.
Our original British Trade Index of 1962 lists it as 1924-5, and says that all cards are found with a corner clipped [something which is often done in connection with a prize or with an album exchange.] It gives the title "Animals" though this does not appear on the card, so it also says (A) which means the title was adopted, given to it by the earliest cartophilic researchers. They measure 62 x 38 m/m and are cut outs. And they are numbered on each card. In total there are three series, a first, second and third series, each of twenty cards. Then there is a fourth series, of "Regimental Nicknames", measuring the same size, but a set of thirty cards. There is also a code, D/X21-359.
If we go there, and it is at the back of the same volume, the first thing it tells us is that "the recording under set 359 in RB.21 is repeated and revised below". I have scanned this RB.21/359, which was issued in 1952, and here it is
The revisions to this for the British Trade Index were as follows:
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1 (or A above) the issuer name is given in full as African Tobacco Manufacturers, and it is also added that the cards are numbered. However the phrase "cut out" must have been thought rather confusing, so it has been changed to (a) die cut to stand out (b) not die cut. This company was based in South Africa, and it was a tobacco issue. And the cards were issued in 1922.
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2 (a new issuer) Dunns. Cards were un-numbered, and there were two sizes (A) 62 x 38 (B) 67 x 35 m/m. Dunns issued chocolate, so trade, and were based in London. I have not yet found the year this set was issued.
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3 (or C above) Thomas Holloway. Size 97 x 65 m/m. Cards were numbered but could be found in a) English b) Dutch and c) Spanish. They were also vari-backed with six possible adverts. Thomas Holloway issued pills and ointments, but the intriguing thing is that they issued these larger cards much earlier, in 1900. They are also a bit hard to locate in dealer lists because they call them "Natural History Series" and batch them in with other cards.
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4.(or B above) Hustler Soap. Size 62 x 38 m/m. Die cut to stand out. Three series, each numbered between 1 and 20.
Some of the confusion was cleared up by the more recent update of the British Trade Index, though strangely it is listed under John Knight Ltd rather than Hustler Soap. This is because as John Knight they issued larger sized advert cards and postcards, some of which are most elaborate and have moving wheels and slats. The book also tells us that the Hustler cards are not necessarily all found with the corner clipping and it is possible to find enough entire cards to make complete sets. And it also clears up any thought of Regimental Nicknames being the fourth set, for that is revealed to have been issued in 1924, before the Animals sets started.
Thursday, 19th January 2023
This set only appears in our original set of British Trade Indexes, part two. It is described as being small [or standard] size, numbered, and a set of fifty cards. The back has a Pretoria address, [which is 159 Watt Road. And do note that they sell Tea and Coffee]
The set does not appear in our updated British Trade Index, though other South African sets do, and that is because they were issued in Great Britain and in South Africa. However this set was only issued in South Africa, so it is excluded.
We included this card mainly because if you read the text in Afrikaans, the rabbit is called an Angorakonyn, from where you can see how Kony, or Coney became the name for a rabbit, and for the Island we featured a couple of days ago.
These are angora rabbits and they are used for wool just like sheep, though it is technically called either hair or fibre. It is warm and light on the human skin. This card shows the white rabbit, though they can come in greys browns and blacks.
If you buy angora items do make sure they are ethically produced, please.
Friday, 20th January 2023
After my initial efforts at trying to track this down as an Australian issue, I have had the most marvellous and informative email from Malcolm Thompson, which tells me that the card is from a set of sixteen cards issued with Harold Hare's Newspaper in 1960. The cards measured 95mm x 50mm and had to be cut out from sheets before sticking them into an album called 'My book of pets and animals'. And here are a couple of pictures, also supplied by Malcolm Thompson - namely the front cover, followed by the back.
The card backs were blank because the descriptions were given adjacent to the picture when put in the album. The set was obviously designed for young children because here is the description for the Rabbit:
"Long ago all rabbits ran wild in the countryside, but nowadays they are mainly kept as pets and live in hutches. The English rabbits in the picture are a cuddly bunch of bunnies aren't they? There is nothing they like better than nibbling at a crisp lettuce or carrot. In fact, like some children, they always seem to be hungry, and love to munch away the whole day through. Some children take their rabbits along to Rabbit Shows. They have lots of fun seeing all the other rabbits there, and often win prizes, too"
The other cards in the set are The cormorant, hedgehog, cow, Alsatian, elephant, cat, rabbit, camel, goldfish, donkey; carrier pigeon, sheepdog, hamster, bee, macaw and llama.
And if you would like to read even more, read "'Pets on Cards'" by Malcolm Thompson, which was published in Cigarette Card News Vol 83 No's 927 & 928 and Vol 84 No 937.
Once armed with all this extra info, I found that you can read more about the newspaper at British Comics / Harold Hare and that it ran from 1959 to 1964. Now thrillingly they show all the covers, and many show giveaways, including our set, which fitted in an album called "My Book of Pets and Animals". In fact I can see our card,
The reason why the card codes start with an F is because the magazine was published by Fleetway Press. As far as our own reference books, the original British Trade Index part 2 and our updated single volume British Trade Index tells us the album had twelve pages with spaces for the sixteen cards corner mounted, (does this mean that they were precut with slots?) The cards are 95 x 50 m.m when cut, because they were issued in six pairs and one block of four. The pairs were issued as The Bee - Golden Hamster / The Camel - The Rabbit / The Donkey - Fish / The Hedgehog - The Cormorants / The Alsatian - The Crow / The Elephant - The Cat / The Llama - The Macaw / The Sheepdog - Carrier Pigeons.
And this means I have to go back and look what the block of four was!
Well my faithful readers, we have reached the end again. And yet again with no codes, but these will be added tomorrow.
I have much enjoyed writing these weekly newsletters, and they have always, but the once, gone up on time, Saturday Morning, as close to midnight as I can muster. They have brought me much pleasure and also given me new people to add to my list of interests and to research. I hope that they have brought you the same. Some of you may feel they meander a bit, and that is the case, for I never know where the research will lead me, I just let it lead. Sometimes it is best to go with that flow, to not get worried or upset over things you think you may have lost, because in the end the flow may bring them back, in more need of you than ever.
Have a great week, with lots of pleasant discoveries. And I hope to see you here again next Saturday