So as the weekend starts, by Friday midnight sliding into Saturday morning, a second at a time, as we also slide a new newsletter over the top of the last. Sometimes I think I was foolish, when I started working on your website, to suggest a newsletter at all, let alone to even entertain the possibility of doing one every week; but for the most part, I celebrate that it has taught me much along the way, and at other times, bad times, I thank it for giving me something that I had to find a way to do, whatever else was failing me, whatever else I had lost.
Now before we go any further, an update from the last newsletter, dated 13 July 2024, because we were contacted by Stuart Arnold, who has supplied us with the two missing group names from the Garbaty "Eroberung der Luft" - these being "western states" and "northern states".
He also sent us a little present, a scan of the model aeroplane which was included in the album, of which this is but a thumbnail - the proper scan is in last week`s newsletter (click the bold link above - and scroll down to Monday 15th of July), at a size which might allow you to construct your own, when winter comes and we are trapped indoors with nothing to do...
As for this week, well read on, for tales of knights and queens, broken promises, thrills and sadly spills, changes of regimes, re-admissions and apologies, electrification after acoustic, and cool, damp places......
G.A. Jasmatzi A.-G. [tobacco : O/S - Germany] "Die Welt in Bildern" (1929) Serie 23, Picture 1 - J400-120 : J14-2 : X24/8.E
Lets start with a centenary, for today in 1924 saw the first ever chess federation founded in Paris. This was the Federation Internationale des Echecs - better known as FIDE - or the World Chess Federation, and in their first year they hosted a "Chess Olympiad", for national teams. This is still in operation, every other year - whilst in the year without it there is a World Team Championship for the best teams of the previous event.
Today the Federation is based in Switzerland, and its main purpose is to act as a hub that connects all the various other national and international chess groups - of which there are over two hundred. It has also organised the World Chess Championship since 1948, and, since 1999, it has been recognised as a body by the International Olympic Committee - though it has never yet been approved as an Olympic sport. There are two main reasons for this - firstly, because it it was not clear enough how to tell a professional player, ineligible for the Olympic Games, from an amateur - and secondly because the sport only involves brain power, not physical power.
However, changing this would be a popular decision - for there are over six hundred million people in the world who are estimated to play chess, and more than ten million of those are officially already registered to compete. And there is a precedent, because since 2006 chess has featured in the Asian Games, along with e-sports, and the game of Go. So maybe we will one day see chess at the Olympics.
Now chess appears on quite a few early large format European advertising trade cards, and is also a brand name used by Hignett.
As far as cigarette cards go, there are two different "first appearances" which are often quoted, both issued in 1925 - one is card 21 of W.D. & H.O. Wills` "Heraldic Signs & Their Origin", where a rook is shown on a board - whilst the other is card 34 of Alexander Boguslavsky`s "Sports Records" second series, which shows a game in progress with Sir George A. Thomas Bart.
However, both of these are actually incorrect, because Gallaher beat them to it with card 5 of "British Champions of 1923", showing Jose Raul Capablanca.
Jose Raul Capablanca, or more correctly Jose Raul Capablanca y Graupera, is also featured on our card, but sadly there is no text, so I shall supply a very brief biography. He was born in November 1888, in Havana, Cuba, and he was the third World Chess Champion, reigning from 1921 until 1927, when he was beaten by Mr. Alexhine. The sad thing is that Mr. Alexhine refused point blank to ever play Mr. Capablanca again, and they had a major falling out, in fact Mr. Capablanca was so disturbed by this that he stopped playing chess entirely in 1931. He did make a bit of a comeback in the mid 1930s, but he was not in good health, suffering badly with the effects of high blood pressure, and in 1942 he died, as the result of a brain haemorrage.
The next card comes in 1935, when Pattrieouex`s "Sporting Events and Stars" features Dr. Alexander Alekhine as card 26. And in the following year, Dr. Max Euwe appears as one of the "Champions of 1936" by Ogdens. The text on the reverse of this card perhaps ought to be shown to the Olympic Games Selectors, as he states that "The new champion is a believer in perfect physical fitness and he declares that it is impossible to play chess efficiently unless you are healthy. He regards swimming and tennis as ideal exercises." And actually the match between these two players is shown on card 79 of a Dutch? "Blue Band" series "Sporten en Spelen in Woord en Beeld", issued in 1954.
In more modern times chess has been featured on several cards, and these have often reminded us of stars of the past.
These cards started to be issued in 1927 and they ran through until 1932, encompassing over a thousand different images. They were designed to be stuck in albums, which is why the backs are not descriptive, and several tobacco companies issued the same set (which is why you often get different backs in a set, or part set, and also, very often, in albums, though you cannot see that when they are stuck in).
Our set is listed in our original World Tobacco Issues Index as :
DIE WELT IN BILDERN (the World in Pictures). Sm. 58 x 40. Nd. See X24/8E ... J14-1
1. Serie 1 - 24 (144)
2. Serie 25 - 72 (144)
3. Serie 73 - 124 (156)
4. Serie 125 - 176 (156)
X24/8E is in the handbook to this volume, and the text there tells us that there were many issuing companies, and seven different back designs, which denoted the set, not the issuer, all issuers used the same, more or less, though they changed the name.
The only differences to this listing and the one in the updated World Tobacco Issues Index is that they manage to fit series 1-24 and 73-124 on one line, and the same for series 25-72 and 125-176 - and that they have discovered that the final series is actually inscribed "Album 4"
Our card turns out to be a great illustration of what can happen to cards, and how our books help things like that to be discovered, because looking at the card it quite plainly says it is from Serie 28, but has the "Sphinx" back that is only from Serie 1-24. That means that at some time an owner, or perhaps a trader, must have made the partially missing "3" into an "8".
Now "Die Welt in Bildern" was issued by ten tobacco companies, but they did not all issue every part, which is another reason that albums are sometimes made of up constituent parts that are not entirely matching. Our issuer, "Jasmatzi", only issued serie one to four - whilst "Constantin" issued the strange assortment of serie 1, 2, 5 and 8, "Sulima" issued serie one to three alone, and "Yenidze" only ever issued this first serie, none of the rest. Only "Josetti", "Manoli", and "Salem" issued all eight series. As for the other issuers, "Bulgaria" and "Eckstein Halpaus" issued series 6,7, and 8 - and "Delta" issued just series 6 and 7.
F. & J. Smith [tobacco : UK - Glasgow] "Battlefields of Great Britain" - Auld Brig brand (1913) 2/50 - S548-050.L : S84-2.L
Today, in 1403, saw the Battle of Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, where King Henry IV defeated some of his rebel forces, who were led by Henry Percy, otherwise known as "Harry Hotspur" - and it gives me another chance to illustrate one the many backs of this set.
Like most wars, it started over something trivial - and it broke a friendship forever. For the Percy family had been good friends with Henry IV, in fact they had fought with him against King Richard II, in the conflict that saw Henry IV become King of England, as well as in several battles and skirmishes afterwards. However, when one of these ended, Henry IV made lavish promises, that he would make sure his supporters were paid, and handsomely, not just with money but with titles and lands. The Percys were promised good land in Cumberland, only to see that land given to another, and money, which never came. So they were aggrieved, took matters into their own hands, and were at war with their former friend.
The back of this card tells the sad tale of what happened next, for the "Royalists, under Henry IV, met and defeated the insurgents under Hotspur. Hotspur was killed, and Douglas and Worcester taken prisoners".
This card also tells us that "Henry Prince of Wales (Henry V) ... displayed great bravery and was severely wounded." In fact he was struck by an arrow, on the left hand side of his nose, which burrowed itself inside his skin and bone to a depth of six inches - and the head of the arrow remained stuck fast inside after the shaft was pulled out. If you want to read all the gory details of its extraction, they can be found at medievalists/2023.08 Harry Hotspur was also killed by an arrow, which was heading his way, just as he raised his visor, and that was all it took. But that leads us to the most important thing about this battle - for it was the first time that archery was used in war. These men had formerly been the bodyguard for Richard II, and, for some reason, a lot of them were Cheshire men - in fact there is a document dated for the 13th of July 1397 which tells the Sheriff of Chester to find him two thousand archers. Many of these were only used once, but the rest, almost three hundred, stayed as personal bodyguards, who, we think, only worked one day a week, but were on retainer in case of trouble.
Why some of them ended up fighting against the crown is complex, but it looks like when Richard II was deposed they were given their marching orders by the incoming Henry IV. Another telling fact, though, is that Henry IV had given Percy a job, justiciar of the palatinate, in Chester, and he had done his best to look after these men as they returned disgruntled and unemployed.
F & J Smith was an interesting company, and they had a fun way of advertising, which was to issue many of their sets with a designated front, and the same text to the reverse, but with a different brand of tobacco or cigarettes. This set actually has fifteen possible advertisement backs for each of these fronts, and so we have decided to house the main listing elsewhere - at
https://csgb.co.uk/cardoftheday/2024-03-20
That will include a clickable link to all the other backs as soon as we can. But it already has a few!
TOP SELLERS [trade : cards : UK - Leicester] "Famous Cars" (1970) 12/285
Today in 1894 saw what is generally thought of as the first ever motor race, though it is probably better to say the first organised race, as, for the most part ,wherever you get two men, in two cars, the result is a race. It was actually billed as the closing event of a celebration of motoring which had been taking place in Paris over four days, as a "Horseless Carriage Contest". It was run in heats, each thirty one miles distance, and the winners of those went forward to attempt the grand race, over double that, at seventy eight miles long, all the way from Paris to Rouen.
The end of the race was more than a bit chaotic. Jules Albert Dion finished first, but was disqualified because his car was steam powered and needed the assistance of another man, a stoker. The fastest petrol car was therefore a Peugeot. And the prize for "The competitor whose car comes closest to the ideal" ( a very odd phrase) was shared between Peugeot, again, and the maker of our car Panhard et Levassor.
This odd name comes from Rene Panhard and Emile Levassor, but there was, briefly, a third man in the pot, a lawyer, called Edouard Sarrazin. We will get to him in a minute. The company started in 1887, and their first job was to find someone who would supply the car they had designed with an engine.That turned out to be Daimler, who agreed to license them the design, rather than sell it outright, and their first car was sold in 1890.
Now Sarrazin had been the go-between in that engine deal, but by the time it was finalised he had died, and his widow taken over. And in the same year as the engine was theirs, the widow Sarrazin became Mrs Levassor. Sadly, their time together was brief, for in 1896 Mr. Levassor was very badly injured during the Paris-Marseille-Paris Race, in an incident when a dog ran out in front of him, and he died the following year as a result of his injuries.
This is getting rather a gloomy newsletter, eh...
Now as for the winner of the Paris to Rouen race, we know that there were many reasons why it could have been seen as the ideal car, above many of the other competitors - they had a clutch pedal not unlike our own, and a chain driven gearbox, plus they had moved the radiator and engine to the very front of the car to help with air cooling and efficiency. Most of all it was the first car to ever have a steering wheel, rather than a steering bar.
The company remained as Panhard et Levassor all through the First and Second World War, diversifying into the production of military vehicles. It was only in the late 1940s that saw the company renamed to simply Panhard. However their last passenger car was produced in 1967, and shortly after they became part of Citroen, after which the Panhard name was only used on military vehicles. Then in 2012 Renault bought the name - again for military vehicle use.
W.D. & H.O. Wills [tobacco : UK - Bristol] "Builders of the Empire" (1898) /50 - W675-077 : W62-55 : W/20
Today, in 1813, this man, Lieutenant General The Right Honourable Sir Thomas Maitland GCB GCMG GCH, became the first Governor of Malta. The reverse of this card tells us that it was not his first such position, for he had been Governor of Ceylon from 1805 until 1810, during which time he had "caused vast tracts of land to be cultivated and obtained the sanction of the British Government to colonize the Island." This may have improved the finances, but what of the wildlife, and local people? Two sides to every story, as they say.
Anyway he was then given the task of upgrading Malta, which is described here as "where he maintained and strengthened the British mastery of the Mediterranean, earning the name of "King Tom". He lasted there but three years, becoming Commissioner of the Ionian Islands in 1816.
Now he was born in March 1760 and died in January 1824. We know that he was a member of parliament from 1790 until 1796, as well as a Captain in the Seaforth Highlanders, and then was in parliament again from 1802 until 1806, by which time he was at the rank of Brigadier General. Then he left for Ceylon, but returned again to parliament in 1812-13, leaving for Malta thereafter.
There is a bit missing there though, from 1797 until 1802, and it turns out that he was in Haiti, sent there to capture the colony from France and make it British. The attempt was not entirely successful as a huge number of his men died of yellow fever, despite his efforts - something that must have returned to haunt him when he was charged with taking Malta from a protectorate to a crown colony, as he arrived when the island was rife with plague. However he seems to have learned from the yellow fever and though almost five per cent of the islanders were lost, it was due to his quarantining measures that a halt was put to the disease within a very short time indeed.
I cannot find this exact portrait, the closest seems to be in the National Portrait Gallery where it is described as being by Thomas Goff Lupton, but also "after John Hoppner". This means that Mr. Lupton copied an earlier portrait by Mr. Hoppner. Anyway I will see what I can dig up in times to come.
I am really not sure why I thought it was a good thing to use a Wills card when I am running short of time, but I shall plough ahead.
It first appears in our original Wills reference book part two, as :
20. 50. BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE.
Fronts lithographed in full colour with white margins. Head and shoulder "authentic portraits". Numbered at top left-hand corner. Subjects titled in white panel, inside margins, backs in grey. Series title in scroll at head, "Wills`s Cigarettes" in white letters at base, text in centre.
Cards can be collected on two types of board (a) white (b) cream card.
The records of Wills show the date of issue as 1895. Printed by Mardon, Son & Hall.
The only problem with this is that Wills records, or at least the ones which were published in their "Works" magazine, give this set as 1898, the same year as "Double Meaning".
In our World Tobacco Issues Indexes the set appears as part of section 1.E, "Issues 1898 - 1902 inscribed "Wills`s Cigarettes - Cards without the full name of firm". It is described as :
BUILDERS OF THE EMPIRE. Sm. 67 x 35. Nd. (50). See W/20
Arbuckle [trade : Coffee : O/S - USA - New York] "American States" (1890s) 73/??
There seems to be a definite 19th century theme this week, for today in 1866 saw a very curious event indeed, when the Confederate State of Tennessee was re-admitted into the Union, and first of all their fellows.
Considering that the people of East Tennessee were so in opposition to everything that the Union held dear, you may think this is odd - and so soon, as the last battle of the Civil War was only in December 1864, at Nashville. However, you must take into account that it was also the last state to join the Confederacy, in 1861. And somehow, by the end of February 1865, Tennessee had eagerly taken up the thirteenth amendment (that forbidding the holding of slaves) as well as the still hotly contested today fourteenth amendment (regarding the rights of citizenship and equal protection for all).
They were also quick to prove their acceptance of the ruling, and to allow African-Americans into the legislature, as well as employ them in positions of fairly high status, even as state and city officials. Indeed, in Nashville, one third of the entire City Council was, eventually, formed with African-Americans. Then look at this card, where the top illustration shows the manufacture of cotton, one of the biggest wasters of slave labour of all time. Proof that you can change, if you must.
Now Tennessee is rather a made-up state, it started off as part shelved off out of North Carolina, and then was made a part of the Southwest Territory. It was admitted as the sixteenth state of the United States of America in June 1796.
Figurine Panini [trade/commercial : cards/stickers : O/S - France] "Hit Collection" (1970s) 97/
Bit more up to date now, for today, in 1963, it is said that this man, Robert Allen Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan, at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, just decided not to play his usual acoustic guitar and picked up an electric one instead. This makes it sound as if he had never before played electric, but in actual fact when he had moved to Minneapolis in 1959 he had come with an electric guitar, which he later traded in for an acoustic. He was well versed on both machines.
One theory is that he wanted the sound of his set to travel further around the festival, hence the electric. This is not strictly the case, because un-amplified acoustic guitars are actually louder. It is only when the amplifier is attached to the electric guitar that it lives up to its name and amplifies the sound the guitar is making.
Now before we move along, there are several inaccuracies in this text as well, he was not born on the 21st of May 1941 (it was the 24th) - The "Festival de Wight" or the Isle of Wight Festival was in 1969, not 1970 - and Blowin` in the Wind was released in 1962, not 1961.
"Bob" Dylan has endured, mainly, because of his songwriting. Also, though, because he was seen by many as a figurehead of rebellion and revolution in the 1960s, when his songs, and the words inside them, were picked up by Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam campaigners. Whilst he always aimed to be a folk singer, and his heroes were Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams.
And today, when we look back at the 1960s, and wish we had been there, or older, it is not too long before his name, and words, pop back into our hungry minds. And if you want to refresh your memory, nip along to Come Writers and Critics/Cards - where a huge selection of his trade cards are displayed.
Liebig [trade : meat extract : O/S - France] "Arbres Bizarres" / "Strange Trees" (????) 2/6 - F.1304 : S.1306
And, to close, probably the most important day of all, World Mangrove Day - or, to give its full name "The International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem". This is a relatively new day in the awareness calendar, only designated by the General Conference of UNESCO in 2015 and only first held the following year.
Now in case you are wondering what is so important about a mangrove - well, they are one of the best ecosystems in the world, whose branches, trunks, and roots, which run above and below the water, support and protect a vast amount of wildlife, whilst the soil beneath and around them somehow absorbs more carbon than the tree releases. In addition the way they grow gives a great natural coastal barrier against storm surges like, but not limited to, tsunami.
However UNESCO findings are that several countries have lost almost half of their mangrove swamps - and, even more worryingly, this data was collected between 1980 and 2005. We have almost a quarter of a century beyond that to be included, and I cannot believe it will paint a pleasing picture.
Perhaps the problem is that the mangrove is so little known of by the general public. In fact,, after much searching, I can only find it on this one card - but I am hoping that readers know of at least a couple more.
Now the back of this card makes me think it is a late issue, and yet it is listed amongst older issues. So if anyone knows a date of issue, do please advise.
This week's Cards of the Day...
... has hopefully been a bit of fun, because on July the 17th it was World Emoji Day - and as to why this date was chosen, well it is because there is an emoji for calendar - 📆 - and the date shown on it is none other than July 17th.
Also, 2017 seems to have been the first year of there being a World Emoji Day, as well as a feature film, "The Emoji Movie".
By the following year it was stated that over 900 million messages were sent every day that were entirely composed of emojis, without one single word.
Now some of our readers may know nothing of "emoji", or their other name "emoticons" - I think the second phrase is best because it explains it better, joining emot[ion] to icon, or picture. And that is all they are, the way to express a feeling with a picture rather than words. In addition they are a way of communication between people who may not speak the same language, or may not speak at all. And it is fair to say that most human needs are there, which we will have a look at through the week.
Saturday, 13th July 2024
The clue here was what is almost certainly the most popular emoji of the moment, ⚽ (thanks to the Euros).
This is emoji-fied as "The Soccer Ball" and described as a round, black and white ball, as used for the game of soccer. Obviously this is an American description. It first appeared as an emoji in 2009, which seems very late, though even more surprisingly ⚾ (the white with red stitching baseball emoji )only bounced on to the screen at the same time.
The current list of other sports ball emoji are 🥎 (a yellow softball), 🏀 (a red basketball), 🏈 (a brown American football ball), 🏉 (a tan rugby ball).
Lastly there is 🏐 - which people often mistakenly use as a football, it being white with brown lines across it in thatched cottage style sections, like the very early footballs used to be, however this is a volleyball.
As far as the card, this is also a tangled tale.
In our original British Trade Index part two "Shredded Wheat" is listed as "The Shredded Wheat Co., Ltd. Welwyn Garden City" - Breakfast Foods. Cards issued in the 1950s and 1960s", and has twenty-nine issues, fascinating ones they are too, how come I have not encountered them before? However they are earlier than our set, so on to British Trade Index part three, where it says "The Shredded Wheat Co., Ltd. Welwyn Garden City" - SIC in II. Became Nabisco Foods in the 1960s", and lists two advertisement cards from 1900-1910.
I then went back and looked in the original British Trade Index part II, only to find it says "Nabisco Foods Ltd - see under Shredded Wheat".
Anyway returning to British Trade Index part three, and finding "Nabisco Foods, Welwyn Garden City, Herts. - Successor to the Shredded Wheat Co., see sets SIC in II. Includes cards inscribed "Shredded Wheat", issued 1970s-80s, without Nabisco name. Also issued the "Tea Time" brand issue under set TAP-I in III" [which, by the way, is a set of 12 "British Soldiers Through the Ages"]. The listing under Nabisco is a lengthy one and is split into three parts, 1. cards inscribed "Nabisco", 2. brand issues inscribed "Shredded Wheat" and 3. Anonymous. Our set comes in the second section and is catalogued as :
Johan Cruyff Demonstrates Trapping and Shooting. 51 x 47. Picture changes as card is tilted. (4) ... NAB-17
1. Hitting a fast volley.
2. Bringing ball down with chest, and letting go a drive.
3. Displaying ball control.
4. Goal-scoring shot.
Now if that were not confusing enough, on to the British Trade Index part four, where, under Nabisco, it says this :
Nabisco Foods - NAB in III
NAB-17 (Johan Cruyff Demonstrates ...) These picture changing cards are of different sizes and are inscribed on backs as follows :
1. Trapping and Shooting (51 x 47)
2. The Volley (53 x 40)
Curiously, "Shredded Wheat" also still has a listing in part four, adding another early advertisement card to SIC-0.5.
By the time of our updated British Trade Index, issued in the year 2000, the entry for "Shredded Wheat" simply says "Shredded Wheat Co. Ltd. - see Nabisco Foods Ltd.". Gone too are the separations, everything is there and listed by set title in alphabetical order - except for our set, unless this is it ?
COACHED BY JOHAN CRUYFF. 121 x 76. Package issue. Oval pictures, red print on green background. No captions. Plain back, anonymous. Unnd. (4). See HN-3
The only part of this which seems to fit is "anonymous. Unnd. (4)". All the rest is different. So can anyone explain what happened to our set, please?
Sunday, 14th July 2024
Now this clue is for one of the most popular emojis, 😂 (a face crying tears of joy). It is described as a bright yellow face, grinning whilst also crying. Hence the clowns on our card.
It was actually emoji of the year in 2015, and is always in the top three of popularity - in fact in another poll it came out as the most used emoji of all for a whole decade (2011-2020), which is pretty amazing as it was only introduced in 2010. There is some dispute about the 2021 result, as another emoji won, but it was "loudly crying face", which is actually to many people`s minds, the same thing except the mouth is more widely open, and it simply means something is even more funny. Anyway in 2022 our emoji was back in top slot again. Oh, and if you prefer, there is also 😹 (a feline version of this emoji, also laughing until they cry)
This is a great set, and yet few people know of it. All I know is that it was produced in Holland, is entitled "Circus Stars" and it is at least a set of thirty, all of which are clowns, a mixture of the sad faced and the jolly.
I have gone for the jolly, and picked Carlo and Mariano. However my research has turned up something curious as there were clowns of that same name, (Carlo Carpini and Mariano Rodriguez), who worked together and appear on postcards but one of them is in total white face whilst the other has a very elongated nose. Also the postcards are stamped for 1908.
After a lot of chasing I have found out that Mr. Carpini was Italian and Senor Rodriguez was Spanish, and they came from circus families with a very long backstory - and our Carlo and Mariano turn out to be their sons. They seem to have started working together in 1944, and these cards look to be 1960s.
However that is as far as I have got so far!
The backs of these cards differ, I have this Native American with his bow, a man riding a motorcycle along the trapeze with a lady on his shoulders and another either gliding past or laying across them, and also an explorer encountering a huge ape. All backs have the same red curtain to the side, and on the two vertical format cards the number, clown`s name, and "(c) Printed in Holland" are, oddly, upside down to this red big top image. On the vertical back it does not look so odd.
Monday, 15th July 2024
This card referred to the player`s surname "Smiley". Now actually the smiley face was around before the emoji - the word "smiley" as an adjective for smiling first being used in the late 1840s. However it took over a hundred years before anyone drew one, and that was in 1957.
Now the smiley face is a very popular emoticon, and even before they were thought of it was one of the first symbols made out of standard text in the 1980s. We will learn about that tomorrow. But because the smiley is copyright, the emoji is 😊 ("Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes") and it is described as a yellow face with smiling eyes, a closed smile, and rosy cheeks. It stands for happiness, and sends a virtual smile to the person to whom you are contacting, though it is more of a friend icon than anything romantic, the kind of the thing you send if you do not yet know someone well enough for a hug emoticon, but you wish in your heart that you did.
As you can tell I am a simple soul....
Apart from a three card test run, Donruss started selling baseball cards in 1981. This was a "First Edition Collectors Series" of 605 cards, which was sold in packets of eighteen cards and a stick of gum.
Unfortunately Topps then took Donruss to court, claiming that Topps had the exclusive right to put gum in packets with cards - and Topps won.
The following year Donruss had no gum, and a problem, because Major League Baseball did not allow baseball cards to be sold commercially, they had to be given away with something, which was the purpose of the gum. (by the way, I didn`t actually know this until I read this text, which was supplied by my baseball correspondent!) Then someone had a brainwave, and designed a jigsaw puzzle of Babe Ruth that would be complete in sixty-three pieces, a few of which were in each packet. That meant that you were buying the jigsaw and the cards were a gift. Now this jigsaw was titled "Hall of Fame Diamond King" which presumably gave them the idea for our cards, because though the 1982 set was of 653 cards and seven checklists, the first twenty six of those cards are "Diamond Kings" - a large beautifully drawn head shot (sometimes in a helmet and sometimes in a cap) and a small "action shot" as well.
All the "Diamond Kings" that were issued until 1991 look pretty much the same in style - the only difference is that for the 1984 set the top of the card is suddenly festooned with red white and blue bunting. All the sets followed the same format too, cards one to twenty-six being the players, and card twenty-seven the checklist. They looked very unusual, and you could tell them almost instantly at a glance. However few collectors probably realised that these cards were actually taken from watercolours, painted by Dick Perez, who over four hundred of them, starting in 1982.
With the 1991 set, some of the players started to be shown just full length in an action pose, and in a much more photographic style. And in 1992 they were foil cards. By the way the jigsaw remained a constant, a different player every year! Then, in 2009, Donruss was bought out by Panini, and the Diamond Kings were shelved, only returning at the 2012 National Sports Collectors Convention. Unless anyone knows of any earlier - test runs etc.
Tuesday, 16th July 2024
Now there was another main predecessor to the emoji - this was designed by a man called Scott Fahlman, in the 1980s, who suggested that certain characters used in the ASCII language that was used by computers could be made to look like pictures. "ASCII", by the way, is an acronym for `American Standard Code for Information Interchange`.
His first two designs were a smiling face and a frowning face - and these were comprised of a full colon for the eyes, a dash for the nose, and either of the parentheses for the mouth. In case you are confused, the face was designed to be viewed sideways - as :
:-) - or - :-(
Now when the typewriter was invented in 1866, it had just twenty eight keys, and you could have made the eyes with a colon, and the nose with a dash, but not the mouth, unless you used the capital letter I, which, curiously, also served for a number one, because the numeral keys only started with the number two. Likewise the capital letter O was also used for a zero. The semi-colon, the one with the comma not the two dots was also a later arrival, to get one you would have to back space and type a comma on top of the colon.
The first time that these rounded parentheses appeared on a typewriter seems to have been in the 1930s - which is slightly later than our card. They were above numbers 8 and 9 and they were accessed by pressing the shift key at the same time, much as we do today on our computers. However my chromebook has them above numbers 9 and 0.
Parentheses ( ) were added to the English language much later than chevrons < > and than square brackets [ ] - which are also known as "lunula" because they are the shape of the moon when it is a crescent. However parentheses were first to appear on keyboards. It seems that this was because they alone had a mathematical function which was used in business. The other sort of bracket, { } was not added to computer keyboards until the 1960s - and some people used those in their sideways face to show the speaker was female rather than male. And it seems that ASCII was the first typed language to have all these symbols on it.
This card is one of those lovely little thin, almost paper ones, which I am very keen on. This one shows a lady typist at a factory, see the chimneys behind her out of the window, and though she is facing away from it, glued to her work, she probably considered herself to be very lucky indeed to have such a job, and we know that in the 1920s typists were quite sought after as they were replacing the men who were lost to the office during, and because of the First World War. In America a typist could earn twenty dollars a week - and though this was at least ten to fifteen dollars less than her male equivalent, it was double that of many trades.
This actual set is called "Les Ecritures", which means "The Writings" but simply shows the story of writing through the ages starting with the countries who developed the languages we use today, and then showing how writing developed. A full set comprises :
- Russe - Russian, but possibly meaning Cyrillic
- Assyrienne - Assyrian
- Latine - Latin
- Phenicienne - Phoenician
- Hebraique - Hebrew
- Chinoise - Chinese
- Arabe - Arabic
- Les Manuscrits au Moyen-Ages - Hand lettering during the Middle Ages
- Les caracteres d`imprimerie a la Renaissance - printing during the Renaissance
- Les Heiroglyphs chez les Egyptiennes - Heiroglyphics at the home of the Egyptians
- Les Tablettes Romaines - Roman Tablets
- La Machine A Ecrire Moderne - A modern typewriter
Wednesday, 17th July 2024
It seems strange to me that the typewriter was so small and yet the early depiction of computers, especially in science fiction, like here, were so huge. However, remember the ENIAC, which we featured in our weather week - well, that did indeed fill an entire room when it was first switched on in 1945.
Another amazing fact is that when this card was issued in 1966, computers were still massive. The first so called "personal computer" was not invented until 1973 - it was designed in France, and was named the Micral N. It was basically a square box, with lights on the front, measuring 45 cm x 45 cm x 15 cm high - weighing in at 12 kilograms. It took another year before a video terminal and a keyboard were available, and you had to buy them separately. You could probably not have produced emoji on this machine, unless you were very good at coding.
Microsoft machines are kind of the missing link here, because from the 1990s onwards, as part of their preloaded fonts, they had three which were pictorial. "Holiday" was, as it suggested, more like tiny Christmas clip art, but "Wingdings" and "Webdings" were little symbols. The problem was that if you were sending a message including them to a friend and that friend was not on a Microsoft machine they would not show up.
This set is in colour, and it is a television tie-in to Gerry Anderson's "Thunderbirds. It was issued with Thunderbirds sweet cigarettes, and it was popular enough that a second series was issued in 1967. However they are sparsely described in our original British Trade Index part two, as just :
THUNDERBIRDS - A SERIES OF 50. Sm. Nd. (50) Album issued ... BAR-95
THUNDERBIRDS - A SECOND SERIES OF 50. Sm. Nd. (50) Album issued ... BAR-96
This text is slightly in our updated British Trade Index, to :
THUNDERBIRDS - A SERIES OF 50. 1966. 65 x 35. Nd. (50) Album issued ... BAR-750
THUNDERBIRDS - A SECOND SERIES OF 50. 1967. 65 x 35. Nd. (50) ... BAR-755
This suggests that there was an album for the first set of cards only - but the packets that contained those cards have no mention of the album (or a price for the sweet cigarettes), whilst the second series were sold in packets that cost 3d. and spoke of the album on the back of those packets - "...obtained from your shopkeeper for 1/- or send us 1/- in stamps or a 1/- P.O. with your name and address in block capitals."
Thursday, 18th July 2024
Younger readers may not realise this, but at one time owning a computer was a big thing, and not everyone did. For one thing they were expensive - according to Columbia University, the first personal computer, the 1957 IBM 610 Auto-Point Computer, cost $55,000 - and they reckon that this equates to over $460,000 today. There is also a photo of it, which will stretch your definition of the word "personal" by a long way. Also, they were complex, way too much so for ordinary people. And the sort of people who used computers were not really the target audience for emoticons.
This all changed when the mobile phone was invented. The first one was released commercially by Motorola in 1983, and it was the DynaTAC 8000X. It may have weighed the same as a brick, 2 kilos, and it looked like one too, and the reception was pretty sketchy which is what comes of inventing a machine without the infrastructure already in place. But it was an instant hit, despite it costing almost four thousand dollars - and the people behind it knew that the way forward was to get a lot of them out there, so they made them smaller, cheaper, and faster. Within ten years they had dropped the price by three thousand dollars. That`s about what an iPhone X cost to buy in 2017.
At first you had to buy a separate keyboard to send emojis - as, presumably, did your recipient - but by 1997 they were becoming standard issue on many new phones.Today we kind of take them for granted, which is sad. So maybe after this week you will appreciate them a bit more.
By the way, this is quite an old phone, with the small screen at the top and the keyboard below - the first full screen, touchscreen phone had been invented in 2006.
To the card! First off, you may be asking why is this set not listed as commercial, when the packets were sold in store. However if you spent over £10 at once on shopping you were given a packet of the cards free, so those cards are technically trade - though it is quite impossible to now therefore tell which cards were which.
You will also find this set listed as being issued by Lego, but the Lego part was only in that the inventions were shown made of Lego bricks with the idea that the collector tried to copy the model on the card with their own Lego. Some of the models were rather complex, and most would have required the purchase of other parts to complete them, and this was probably the idea.
There was also an album, quite a good one, not only a place to stick the cards, but with games and extra information, as well as ideas for other models. It was quite large format though, at 270 x 202 m/m, simply because the cards were also large, at 80 x 55 m/m.
Now I have had some correspondence this week with Mr. John Levitt, about the card of the mobile phone, made of Lego, which I featured last week. It turns out that other games can be played with these cards, and that both cards show elements for the three games. The first is a form of "Dominoes" using the coloured Lego bricks shown on the back. The second concerns the fronts of the cards, which, in the top right hand corner show "create", and you also have an image of a rock for "Rock, Paper and Scissors".
The rules and playing instructions are described in the album - the most important for us being the "Dominoes", which has led to various different card backs being produced in order to play this game. In order to visualise the variations you need to group the coloured bricks together i.e. the top three bricks and the bottom three bricks, at which point you will find that six different colours exist, Light Blue, Red, Yellow, Green, Orange and Purple with each colour being found at the top and at the bottom. An example being 6 different cards with Top Colour Light Blue and the bottom colour being one of the six mentioned etc.
In theory you would end up with 36 different backs, and he has 21 different backs but has seen images of more. With 140 numbered cards you also get variants with the front images, some numbers have got as many as 11 different backs and some as little as two. Thus with all 140 cards having multiple backs he has amassed a total of 778 different cards but again that total is likely to rise if more different backs exist. In the dream of finding out whether there are more, he has included his listing, which you can download by clicking the file icon here
Friday, 19th July 2024
Why we have this card is because we do not know the future of the emoticon. But with artificial intelligence it seems likely that our own minds will be superseded, and the fastest way to give an instruction is always with a picture. Also such a thing is instantly recognised by all nations, whatever their language. One day we may even find humanity born to simply be hooked up to a machine, its minds being used to send simple pictorial signals right the way across the globe, and even out into the furthest reaches of the universe.
It`s Friday night, there must be aliens - again....
This set is seldom seen in this country, and it is scarce in America too.
There are several reasons for this. First of all, it includes the Harlem Globetrotters, showing here, and they are always popular. Secondly, this set was the first ever card appearance of Scooby Doo and his friends. Thirdly, and probably mostly, the cards were not delicately placed inside a protective wrapper and slid in beside the bread, they were simply thrown in loose, which inevitably led to them becoming stained and food-tainted.
The hardest card to get is the check list. We do not know for sure why, but leading collectors swear that they were printed in less quantities - some even believing that this was a deliberate act to keep the collector looking for more cards after they had completed the set in actuality.
As for Wonder Bread, it was born in Indianapolis, in 1921, and then they had a brainwave, to slice the bread in the bakehouse before they put it in the wrapper. By 1930 they were selling "sliced bread" across America. You may be thinking that everyone else then copied this, but it is not entirely true - because in 1928 the W. E. Long Company of Chicago had also offered "sliced bread". I just cannot find out what happened to theirs.....
And so ends another week.Time to turn in, and quiet the presses. I hope you enjoyed it, and that any disappointments will resolve themselves in the most wonderful of ways. It has been a bit hot for me, and definitely for nipper, we much prefer it cooler.
By the way over the weekend I will try to do a bit more on the index, so watch the banner on the front page, because that is where any new cards that are added as replacements are posted.
And do tune in again, same time next week.....