Newsletter - 2024-09-21

Cadet Sweets [trade : confectionery : UK - Slough, Berkshire] "Arms & Armour" (1960) 21/25 - CAD-490 : CAF-2

Now I have stretched this a bit, because it is not actually a Roman Road, but it is an Italian Road, where the Romans originally came from - and it was also based very much on the idea of Roman roads being wide thoroughfares, carved straight to where they were heading. Roman road builders also gave us several of the features that we still use on our roads today - foundations, cambers, which lead down to drainage at the edges of the roads, and also concrete.

Enough preamble, let us drive ahead.

Today marks the centenary of the Autostrada, the first motorway in the world - opened in 1924, and first driven on by King Victor Emmanuel III.  

This road is quite a short distance, under twenty miles in length, yet it touches on Lake Como, Lake Varese, Lake Maggiore and Lake Monate. No wonder then that it is known as the Autostrada dei Laghi (or Lakes Motorway). It also has a companion, the A8, which joins on to it and is also known as the Lakes Motorway.

.Now our route was a toll road, to defray the expense of building it - though, curiously, at the time it was opened there were very few cars in Italy. However it was hoped that it would attract the attention of the general public and everyone that did have a car would come along just to be able to say they had driven on it. And it was also opened in the region which did have the most cars at the time.

Strangely it was originally given the number of A9, and not the A1. The A1 was not built until the 1960s, closely followed by the A2. These two were merged when the modern A2 opened almost fifty years after, in 2017.

The next oldest Autostrada to ours is the A4, built in 1927, which runs from Trieste to Turin. 

This set is very well done, but it was only issued this once, and not by any other manufacturers. There is also very little about it in our original British Trade Index, simply :

ARMS AND ARMOUR. Sm. 67 x 36. Nd. (25) ... CAF-2

And this text is more or less the same in our updated British Trade Index, save that "Sm." has been replaced by the date of issue, and the reference code is changed.

Enver Bey Zigarettenfabrik [tobacco : O/S : Berlin, Germany] "Geistesgrossen Aller Zeiten und Ihre Bahnbrechenden Werke" (1930s) 41/72 - E32-2.1

Our Electrical Entrepreneur was none other than Michael Faraday, born today in 1791. Despite his humble beginnings, for he was the son of a blacksmith who had travelled from Westmorland to London to seek employment, he had a thirst for knowledge. Somehow he came to meet a bookseller and bookbinder, to whom he became apprenticed. Now these were not just fiction books, they were treatises and scientific works, and he eagerly read them. Not just that, but he met the people who wrote them, and brought them to the shop - and he also impressed them with his knowledge, so much so that they asked him to attend lectures.

His main fascination soon became electromagnetism. This card demonstrates it well, for it involves working with the magnetic field of a direct current, and a conductor with which that field can be affected. Crucially, he also discovered that light could be affected by magnets too. 

Along the way, he discovered many other things, and also added many scientific terms to our language. And he was given the great honour of becoming the first ever Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.

For such an important person, he appears on few cards. The Trading Card Database has him on only two, Lone Jack Cigarette Co.`s "Inventors and Inventions" (1887) and the Topps/Allen & Ginter`s "Minds That Made The Future" (2011).

I can also add a few missing ones though, including another cigarette card, that being A & M. Wix "This Age of Power and Wonder" (1935) 235/250, which calls him "Father of Electricity - Father of all the great electrical powers of our age. pioneer of our days of scientific wonder..." 

As for trade cards, how about Brooke Bond`s "Inventors and Inventions" (1975) 24/50, on which he is credited with inventing the dynamo -  and Meurisse`s "Les Inventeurs" (1930) Serie 51 No.7.

Our card, issued in Germany, is also absent. And it tells a fascinating tale, for none other than the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, established the company, which was also government owned. He founded it in 1926, and called it "Enver Bey" after a person much in the news, Enver Pasha, the Military Attache for Turkey in Berlin from 1909 until 1912, who had also been responsible for encouraging and supporting an Ottoman German Alliance during the First World War. 

There is a bit more about the firm in our original World Tobacco Issues Index, where the entry for Enver Bey reads "German language issues, period 1928-42. Set E32-4 [Soldatenbilder Europaischer Armeen Der Gegenwart / Soldiers of the Present Day European Armies] is inscribed "Die Dicke Enver" without full name of firm. Special albums issued."

The entry for our set reads : 

GEISTERGROSSEN ALLER ZEITEN UND IHRE BAHNBRECKENDEN WERKE (Men of Genius of All Time and Their Pioneer Works). Sm. 53 x 32 or 60 x 40. 
1. "Serie 1".  Nd. 1/72     (72)
2. "Serie 2" . Nd. 73/144 (72)

Today, in 1459, saw the Battle of Blore - Heath, and so I am able to link in another one of these differently branded printings of this F. & J. Smith set

The battle took place during the Wars of the Roses, on a field in almost the middle of nowhere. The closest town today is Market Drayton, in Shropshire. 

There is some debate whether this, rather than St. Albans, was the first battle of the Wars of the Roses. After all, there had been a gap of four years between the two, and even though the House of Lancaster had lost at St. Albans, they had not regrouped, come back, and fought again. But neither had the Yorkists said well hang on, we won, our man should be King. It kind of settled down, to nothing. 

Then, in 1459, The Yorkists took it into their head to go on a march, headed by the Earl of Salisbury. The intention at first seems unclear, or the need to amass some five thousand men, but the plan was to meet up with the Duke of York along the way and eventually join up with the Earl of Warwick, (who was the son of the Earl of Salisbury), and currently in London. News of this got to the King and Queen, Lancastrians, and they asked Lord Audley, out at Market Drayton, to send his army and intercept the Earl of Warwick.

Now this is where the plot thickens, because it is reported that Lord Audley had a huge army, almost three times the size of the Yorkists, and it is not inconceivable that this amassing of troops had been reported to the Yorkists, and maybe even had caused them to march. 

Anyway on the 23rd of September the two forces were drawn together as if by magnets, and they met at Blore Heath. Once more the Yorkists won, despite being outnumbered three to one.

The card shows Audley`s Cross, which marks the place where James, 5th Baron Audley, 2nd Baron Tuchet was killed - however this card shows it as a stone cross, so it is the replacement, erected in 1765.

As far as "Smith`s No.1 Smoking Mixture", that was tobacco, and it was billed as being "The Choicest of All - Prepared for Smokers of Cultivated Taste". The cheapest packaging was in two ounce lead packets at a shilling and threepence each, rising through four ounce oval tins or airtights, each of which were two shillings and sixpence, to eight ounce oval tins which retailed for five shillings. 

This is yet another back which will be added to our main page, which contains all the information and all the brands for this set. You can find that elsewhere, as our Card of the Day for the 20th of March, 2024 

Panini [trade : computer games : O/S - Italy] "Super Mario Trading Card Collection" (2022) 138/252

Strangely, "National Punctuation Day" seems only to be celebrated in America, and it has been a fixture in their calendar every September 24 since 2004, despite the fact that there are only fourteen official punctuation marks in the English language, and most of us use less than half.

The most often used of those fourteen are the full stop, the comma, the semi colon, the colon, the question mark, and the apostrophe.

The next batch are the exclamation mark, and the quotation marks, which, sadly, are falling from favour as our writing becomes more computerised and less flowery.

After that come the puzzling ones, which are used, but not always called the right thing, or even used in the right way - first up being the dash and hyphen, a dash being longer, usually separate, and used to separate two parts of the same sentence, whilst a hyphen is short and generally joined to the letters fore and aft to join two words together - and secondly the square angled brackets, the lip shaped braces, and the curved parentheses, all of which are pretty much only used in computer programming or maths these days.

Last of all we have an ellipsis, which appears most often in quotes, for it is the three dots, one after the other, that tells us there is unnecessary text missing. I use those a lot but never call them by the right names, only "dot dot dot". 

Our card shows a question mark, but does also relate to computers, or games at least. This is a card from Super Mario Brothers, and it is also known as a mystery or prize block, because when it appears, floating along as part of a game, the character you are playing with can leap up as if to a pinata and break it, spilling out the contents, which may or may not be useful as you progress along with the game. Curiously, at one time once it was emptied of those contents, the next player along used to only see a standard yellow block, it is not refilled in the course of play. However in more recent games not all the contents are divulged at once, depending on whether you strike it in the right way. 

Here is a little memory for all the readers who were Seventies Teeny Boppers, for today, in 1970, the first episode of "The Partridge Family" was aired on television.

The basic story, for those too young to remember, was that Mr. Partridge died and left Mrs. Partridge and the children. These children were into music, and tried to cheer the mum up by asking her to help them make a record. This song then becomes a hit, and they go on tour, all around America, in an old school bus, with their first gig, rather far-fetchedly, I always thought, being at Caesar`s Palace, Las Vegas. 

 Now the story was not actually made up, it was based on a family called the Cowsills, who were six siblings and a mother from Newport, Rhode Island. Just like our family, some of the children wanted to make music, then involved their mother, and finally all six siblings were part of the band. They also played Las Vegas. Most tellingly, they made a television special, in 1968, which was so popular that the network asked if they would be interested in making a series. They liked the idea, until it was discovered that they only wanted the children; the mother was going to be played by an actress, none other than Shirley Jones. They pulled out, and so obviously, reading between the lines, the show was made without them. 

These cards did not arrive until 1971, and then it gets really confusing because they were issued in Canada by O-Pee-Chee (sets one and two, both in 1971), in America by Topps (sets one, two, and three, all in 1971), and in Great Britain by A& B.C. Gum (just set three). I have not really checked the permutations, but if anyone else has it would be fun to hear from you.

Series one has 55 cards all with yellow borders, and the backs are either pieces of a sectional puzzle, cast biographies, or, as in our case, song lyrics. 

Series two is of another 55 cards, but they have blue borders and an A suffix to the number on every card. The blue of the O-Pee-Chee version is rather more turquoise. 

Series three is of 88 cards, and these have green borders. They also pick up on the fact that the actors and actresses, especially David Cassidy, have become popular stars in their own right, though, oddly, when the series began, the most famous cast member was mom, Shirley Jones, who had been in musicals and motion pictures for some time, and already had an Academy Award for her 1961 role in "Elmer Gantry". Strangely she was actually the second wife of Jack Cassidy, and David Cassidy`s step-mother - and. later, her and Jack would have three sons of their own called Shaun, Patrick and Ryan. 

Another curious fact is that brother Chris Partridge was only played by Jeremy Gelbwaks in season one, yet he appears in all three series of the cards. The blonder Brian Forster started playing Chris at the start of season two, but does not appear on any of the cards, which may seem to point to the fact that the three sets were all planned and the stills gathered at once, then released in stages. 

Now there is another card, which seems to skip past a lot of collectors, and that was part of the 2013 Topps "75th Anniversary" set, where card 56 is a scene from the series, with a blue border. The back of the card also mentions that "The ABC sitcom was loosely based on The Cowsills, a late 1960s mom and kids rock band". 

Now this set was also available in a variety of printings, as parallel cards, but it is possible, and cheaper, to just buy the card you like best in all the variations - though it is not easy. The variations are : Diamond Sparkle, Foil, Gloss (or Modern Gloss), and as four printing plates which each print a differently coloured section of the image (black, cyan, magenta and yellow). If you are really lucky you might find a card in a plastic case with a round sticker on it, but don`t hold your breath as these were only sold online and are pretty treasured by their original buyers. 

Topps [trade : bubble gum : USA] "The Brady Bunch" (1971) 1/88 

And keeping on with the same theme, here we have "The Brady Bunch", first aired today in 1969. It only lasted for five years, though there were several spin offs, movies, and even a kind of send up movie in the 1990s which still had some heart about it, I am glad to say. 

What happened was that two people met and got married, but they had six children between them. Mr. Brady was a widower with three sons, a dog, and a live in housekeeper who seemed to get the best lines by far, and his new bride had three daughters and a cat. Most of it centred on how all these different people were able to get along, and support each other, and though they were not related by blood, they were a family, and very quickly.

There was a bit of controversy though, because it was never actually revealed how the wife had the three children but no husband. Also, whilst the boys had quite a resemblance, the girls did not, though all were blonde. This was a hot topic amongst the adults in the audience, and it could have been easily solved by just saying she was divorced, but the network would not allow that to happen. In fact divorce in America was always frowned on, and it was only in the 1950s that it was allowed to happen through friendlier, family courts, rather than the standard courtroom, as if it were a crime. It was not until 1969 that California, then governed by Ronald Reagan, became the first state to allow the so called "no fault divorce" into law.

One thing which made the show really popular, and prevented it being just for teens and pre-teens, was that there were lots of guest stars, a selection of people who would appeal to adults and older teenagers, most notably Davy Jones of the Monkees, who turns up to take the oldest Brady daughter to a dance at her school once it is discovered that she has a crush on him. Even Vincent Price turns up, hamming wildly, as a villainous professor. 

Now the first trading cards appeared in 1970, they were issued by Topps but were only a test issue of fifty-five cards, limited numbers and locations. They did create a bit of interest, so Topps issued a proper set in 1971 which had eighty-eight cards, and which were proper trade cards because there was a stick of gum in the packets. This set is a bit confusing because it is dated 1969, but that is when the copyright dates to for the actual television show.

In 2011 Rittenhouse remembered the show, and wanted to celebrate it. First of all they issued two promotional cards, to whip up interest, one of which showed the girls, and one the boys. The card of the boys was only issued with "Non Sport Update" magazine though, so that is scarcer. Then they issued a base set of fifty-nine cards, which use stills from the original series, several stills to a card, and the picture part of the image has rounded corners though the cards are square. They are very attractive. They also managed to get many of the surviving stars to autograph cards, the rare one of which is Alice, as she was only available as a special promotion on the purchase of multiple sets. There were plans to issue a second set, but it never happened. 

Just like our previous diary date, The Brady Bunch was also part of the 2013 Topps "75th Anniversary" set, as card 55. The curious thing here is that on the back Mrs, Brady is openly referred to as a divorcee. This card too is available as parallel cards : Diamond Sparkle, Foil, Gloss (or Modern Gloss), and as four printing plates which each print a differently coloured section of the image (black, cyan, magenta and yellow). If you are really lucky you might find one of these cards in a plastic case too, with a round sticker on it, just as above.

Coopers & Co. Stores Ltd. [trade : tea : UK - Glasgow] "Mysteries & Wonders of the World" first series (1961) 18/25 - COO-180.1 : CPD-4.1

To close then, let us board a transport of delight, and definitely a Railway Revolution, from the Stockton and Darlington Railway - opened today in 1825. Shall I tell you something odd? When I picked my subjects, last Saturday night, I had no idea that I would be travelling on a main line train myself this Friday. 

Anyway this railway was in the North East of England, and it was the first public railway to use steam locomotion. It started out as just a line to and from a coal mine, connecting the collieries out by Shildon to the two towns of Stockton and Darlington

Now this line was very costly to build, and so it had to be funded somehow. The original thought for doing this was to allow people to come and watch it working, and charge them to do so. Therefore, on the 26th of September 1825, the entertainment began. One coach was attached to George Stephenson`s engine, "Locomotion no.1" and several important people boarded it, travelling to Darlington. Spectators were allowed to watch it  coming in, and many stood outside the area hoping to spot it coming across the land.

Then, the next day, the train was on display in Shildon, where it performed several set pieces of moving waggons of coal and was propelled back and forth up a bridge and up a hill. These were just the preambles though, and once they had finished the engine was affixed to a score of coal wagons, cleaned up as best as possible and having had seats fixed inside. The total allowed was three hundred passengers - but people were allowed to pay to ride long after all the tickets had been sold,  and it is estimated that the train, when it left, was almost six hundred, with passengers travelling standing up, and others having climbed on top of the wagons which were going to supply the coal for the trip, heedless of their clothing.  

The trip lasted for two hours, and covered eight and a half miles, though there were two stops which allowed some passengers to leave, and more tickets to be sold.

This great beginning seemed, immediately, to not have led to much. No passengers rode again until the tenth of October 1825, though this was mainly due to the fact that it had been stipulated that if you carried passengers you needed to have a licence, and obey stringent regulations. This is possibly why when that passenger travel did restart the coaches were not pulled by steam locomotion, but by a horse. The fare was a shilling, and the duration of the journey the same two hours. It ran every day but Sunday, four of those days having the facility to return, by another coach, back to where you had started.

It is estimated that almost forty thousand passengers were carried a year.

Despite the modernity of this card, Cooper & Co was actually founded by Thomas Bishop in 1871, to sell teas and coffees. He loved his shop, and enlarged it by buying up other stores, so much so that it was eventually the largest chain of grocery stores in the whole of Scotland. Unfortunately, but at least not in his lifetime, this made them a target for take overs and mergers, and it was bought by Fine Fare. 

They started issuing cards in 1955, with "The Island of Ceylon", then stopped, I have not yet found out why. Their next sets were in 1960, "Strange But True", and our set, which first appears in our original British Trade Index part II as : 

Coopers Teas. Cards issued 1953-1966. Small size 68-69 x 36 m/m. Albums issued. 

MYSTERIES & WONDERS OF THE WORLD. Sm. Nd  ... CPD-4
1. "First Series" (25)   2. "Second Series", Nd. 26/50 (25)

However this extract does not tell the most mysterious fact of all, for out of the seven sets listed in that section, only ours was not issued by anyone else - unlike all the rest, namely :

• "Do You Know" - by Elkes Biscuits
• "The Island of Ceylon" - by more issuers than I have time to list, twenty of them! Coopers also issued this in two formats, one as "Cooper & Co. Stores Ltd, Market St., Glasgow, N.W", and one with a large "Coopers Teas" in the same space instead. 
• "Prehistoric Animals" - by Charter Tea and Sunblest Tea
• "Strange But True" - by Charter Tea
• "Transport Through The Ages" - by Charter Tea, and in an anonymous form. 

Now in our updated British Trade Index, the description of our set is more or less the same, only, again, the date having replaced the "Sm". However there has been something interesting discovered in the intervening years between the two volumes - and that is another printing of both our sets. Now what it says in the updated one is a bit confusing to me, but it reads "Note that both series issued with backs, white letters on blue background "Look out for the new series of Coopers Picture Cards - they`re super!" This sounds like the whole back is blue, but I cannot track one down to show you. So if anyone can confirm or deny, please do.