Newsletter - 2023-10-21

Saturday, 14th October 2023

This card had two clues, the easy one was that this footballer`s surname is Brown and Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, is the scientist who invented the DeLorean Time Machine. The harder clue is that the film is set in Hill Valley, California, and this card was issued by Hill. 

Jack Brown was a nickname, he was born John Henry Brown in March 1899. His first team was not the signing for Worksop, for he had played in junior teams first. At the time of our card he was a goalkeeper, though he did not start out as so - he played centre forward, until the fateful day that the team needed a goalkeeper.

He can also be seen, looking rather less pugnacious, in Carreras Ltd`s 1934 set of "Footballers", the reverse of which card tells us he was born in Worksop and started with the local team before being signed by Sheffield Wednesday in 1923. And by the time of the Carreras card he was also an international player, with two League Championship Medals.

In fact he played most of his life with Sheffield Wednesday, only briefly going to Hartlepool United, in 1937, when he was transferred. However he only played in one match for them, and then made the decision to retire. He was only 38. After his retirement he did not take the usual route of training, or coaching, and he never managed a team. Instead he managed an off-licence, and a pub, then set up as a newsagent. He died in April 1962, aged 63.

So to card chat. You may be wondering why this is Series B? And the answer is within our original reference book to the issues of R. & J. Hill (RB.2), published in 1942, where this set is catalogued in two parts, as : 

1934. 30. POPULAR FOOTBALLERS. "Series A" (titled series). Size 2 11/16" x 1 7/8". Numbered 1-30. Fronts, printed in black only from half-tone blocks - black and white - black border line and white margins. Backs, printed in black only, with descriptions, and inscribed, "Season 1934-5". "Issued only with the `Economy` Cigarettes - Gold Flake Honeydew . . . ." No maker`s name appears anywhere. (See Henry Archer & Co.) Printed by W. Oliver, London"

1934. 20. POPULAR FOOTBALLERS. "Series B" (titled series). Size 2 11/16" x 1 7/8". Numbered 31-50. Fronts, printed in black only, from half-tone blocks - black and white - black border line and white margins. Backs, printed in black only with descriptions, and inscribed, "Season 1934-5". "Issued only with the `Economy` Cigarettes - Gold Flake Honeydew . . . ." No maker`s name appears anywhere. (See Henry Archer & Co.) Printed by W. Oliver, London.

Our World Tobacco Issues Indexes describe it simply as : 

POPULAR FOOTBALLERS - SEASON 1934-5. Md. 68 x 48. Black and white. Brand issue, inscribed "Gold Flake Honeydew & Navy Cut Medium. ..."
1. "Series A." Nd. 1/30 (30) 
2. "Series B". Nd. 31/50 (20)

Sunday, 15th October 2023

Now the clue here is for the leading man, Michael J. Fox, whose character was Marty McFly. So here we have a Scottish river,  on a Scottish card, and many Scottish surnames include either Mc or Mac - and then a fishing fly, being used as bait, which could conceivably be called a McFly.

Puns are such fun. 

These cards are attractive despite the subject. Each card is also topographical, because the picture is of a named region and body of water and then the bait is inset as a small picture, whether that be a fly, as in our case, or live bait. 

Now our World Tobacco Issues Indexes simply read: "ANGLING. Sm. Nd. (25). See RB.21/449.B" but the addition of that RB.21 code is very interesting, because that is, of course, the British American Tobacco Booklet. 

The text in there, filed under "Section XVI - Other English Language Issues" is :

449. ANGLING. Small cards, size 68 x 36 m/m. Front in colour. Back in grey, with descriptive text. Numbered series of 25. 
A. Anonymous issue, with letterpress on back.
B. Faulkner Home Issue
C. Mitchell Home Issue

Now we never issued a specific Mitchell reference book - though one was planned. But now we have read this we can nip along to RB.1, devoted to the issues of W. & F. Faulkner, and read the description for their version of this same set, which is  :

1929. 25. ANGLING (titled series). Size "A" (Standard). Numbered 1-25. Fronts, printed by four colour letterpress, half-tone screen blocks. Illustrations of "fly" inset. Backs printed in grey-black, with descriptions, and numbered. Printed by Mardon, Son & Hall. Also issued by Mitchell. 

Now the immediate thing that I notice there is that it says "Illustrations of "fly" inset", but a look at the entire set shows that the insets are not all artificial flies, there is live bait as well. And in fact only eight, to my reckoning, are flies. And that tells us that when this set was inspected to add to the reference book it was not a set at all, but instead just a few odds, all of which, quite coincidentally, showed flies. 

So if anyone has this anonymous issue I would be interested to hear from you, with respect to whether the back is the same framework, and what it says in the box where the other two issuers insert their name. 

Monday, 16th October 2023

Here we had a DeLorean car, which was used as the time travelling vehicle. But also this DeLorean was the actual car, as the card is also a still from the film. 

Now this was a pretty easy clue if you knew the film but the answer was not revealed until the reverse was shown so we used it. 

At this stage in the Topps story they were still issuing cards with gum, rather than just selling the cards. In America the price of a packet was fifty cents, and each contained nine movie cards, one sticker, and a stick of bubble gum. In the United Kingdom the packets are identical but Topps removed the large black box in the top right hand corner that had the 50c price in it, leaving us with an all blue background. 

This card comes from the second film, which was released in 1989. The basic story was that once the hero comes home from his trip to 2015, he discovers that he must return to the past. Most of the cast and crew returned too, which is always fun. 

Now in case you are wondering why we have a card from the second film and not the first, well there is a very sad fact, and that is that the first film was never given a set of cards. There are reportedly promo cards featuring stills of it, but I have not been able to track any of those down. Yet.

The main body of the set shows film clips from the movie, like ours, but at the end there are a few cards showing the cars (numbers 80-85). One of these cars has rather an interesting back story - that`s on card 81, it is described here as a spider car,  but it had also appeared in the film "Blade Runner" (1992), where it was called a spinner.

The rest of the cards in the set are one offs, No.86 shows the interior of the cafe, No.87 shows Marty Mc.Fly / Michael J. Fox sitting on the DeLorean, and No.88 is a bit of promotion for film number three, the front being entitled "Until Next Time" and showing the DeLorean with the two main stars and a dog, whilst the back tells you that Back to the Future 3 would be at your local movie theater in the summer of 1990.

Tuesday, 17th October 2023

Now here we have one of the eleven stickers that were issued in the same packet as the cards. The background of all of them is entirely white and they are quite simply made, for rather than the die cut shape that allows you to peel out and use just the coloured part of the image, in this instance you just get the entire front as a big oblong - including the number, the film company credits, and the rather large arrow with the instructions to peel. I suppose you could cut carefully round the logo, if you had a mind to. I`ve never been too good at that though.

The picture used on this first sticker is the same logo which appears on the back of every card, above the description. And it also appears as the "picture" on number 1 of those cards. 

There are no descriptions here, for on our card, and numbers 2 - 10 inclusive, there is a sectional part of a puzzle instead, and that makes up a picture of Marty Mc Fly looking at his watch. Card eleven, though, shows the entire picture, as it would look once you assembled all your cards in the right order - and did not have a bumpy carpet or a dog to run through and scatter them just as the last went together.

There is something odd about this final picture card though because it definitely suggests that there would be more sticker sets, and there were not - the top line saying "Here is what your completed yellow border picture will look like" (seeming as if there would be other coloured borders) and the bottom saying "Collect all 10 cards of picture A" (suggesting the possibility of a picture B")

Wednesday, 18th October 2023

Now for the slow reveal. For though we told you, quite rightly, that there were no cards for the first film, and that the first cards were by Topps, for the second film, there were stickers for the first film, and here is one of them. 

These were by Panini, and were issued in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the U.S.A. Oddly Panini were only the distributors of the American version - Minicards Ltd had ours, Scanlens Confectionery had Australia, and the O-Pee-Chee Company had Canada. This information comes from the official album, with thirty two pages, in which you peeled the front from the back and stuck the sticky side into place next to or above its description. That is why there are no descriptions on the reverses. The subjects were a mixture of stills from the movie and and photos taken behind the scenes during filming. 

The stickers were bought from newsagents and other suppliers, in a packet of ten, which had the same front cover as the album, Marty McFly looking at his watch 

The album cost 20p, and has a bit of a cult following with car collectors too, because the centre spread is all about the DeLorean. It shows the car as a blue picture with the gull wings extended upwards - and then there is a two card spread showing the back of the car, and a four card spread showing the same shot of the car except the cards are in colour. 

Anyway, now a warning, because in the year 2000 the album and cards were reprinted. The reprint was only available in America, Australia and New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, and it appears that it was sold as a complete item with the cards. I say this because though those cards are loose, there were also other items as part of the package, these being brochures and thicker larger colour plates. And most of the time all these additional items are sold with the reprint. Now if you had needed to collect those separately I do not think so many would have survived in such good condition. But if anyone disputes this please tell us the truth so we can pass it along to all. 

Luckily these stickers were issued when they were, as they just squeeze inside the scope of our British Trade Index part III, RB.31,  published in 1986. In there they are listed as : 

Back to the Future. 76 x 54. Nd. (180) Dated 1985. 

Thursday, 19th October 2023

Now this may have made some of you think that we had gone back to the start, but this is an official reproduction of card 26 from the original "Back to the Future" set, with a new back, describing the set not the picture, 

And despite the number on the front, this is numbered again on the back as card number 90. 

The 75th Anniversary set is a base set of a hundred cards, showing one card from selected Topps sets on the fronts and talking about them on the reverse. It starts with their first ever set, the 1948 "Magic Photos", and because those cards are small, they manage to get ten of the cards on to the front. However they did rather miss a trick because there are baseball players in that set and none are featured on this front. And it ends with "The X Files", which uses the front from card 2 of the Season One set, issued in 1995.

Now there are also special cards available. These include autographs in several sorts, buybacks, mini cards, and four colours of printing plate cards plus a variety of finishes, foil, diamond sparkle, gloss. There are also test cards. All are explained via the link.

However it is a huge undertaking to get them all, and I truly wonder if anyone does, or whether in such a set as this they just collect the card of their favourite and let the rest pass by? 

Friday, 20th October 2023

This card was a fortunate find, because I hit a wall for a final card, though I did find some very intriguing issues that I could not track down. Read on for those. However I thought it might be interesting to see the DeLorean without the film props, so I went for this. Imagine my surprise when I saw the film was mentioned on the back. 

These were actually issued as a set of 110 cards, in a cardboard box, all at once, in a limited edition of 100,000. The boxes were sealed and had details of interesting things you might find inside - an autograph card of the baseball player Jerome Walton, holographic promo cards, and the chance to win original unnumbered press sheets.

Cards 111 - 165 were issued the following year and I have not yet found out how they were issued.  

Lime Rock were in Providence, Long Island. They issued two sets of baseball cards, which are their most sought after, and also a huge number of sets which you can browse at Trading Card Database / Lime Rock

Now to those missing links. 

The one that everyone seems to think is the most exciting is the Kelloggs issue of 1985. It was only eight cards in length, had a very limited run, and we do not even know where that was - though the fact that the back is in French and English seems to suggest Canada to most people, yet some say it was intended to be for Europe so that one set could do several countries. 

Now even more curiously there is a set issued with Shreddies, and they started in Canada. These are not cards though, they are small booklets which have a story in them, and when you get to the end of each page there is a multiple choice where you pick what you would do and go to the page that answer says. 

Then there are fourteen cards which were given away at the 2015 Comic-Con at San Diego. These ostensibly advertise a book, but they look like the Topps set of cards, and they are numbered, and the numbers follow on from that Topps set.