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    Cigarette Cards and How to Collect Them
    Cigarette Cards and How to Collect Them
    Cigarette Cards and How to Collect Them
    Ebook170 pages1 hour

    Cigarette Cards and How to Collect Them

    By I. O. Evans

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    About this ebook

    This handy book contains a wealth of information on the subject of collecting cigarette cards, and is highly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of anyone with a passion for the hobby. Contents Include: Introduction; The Beginnings of the Cards; Trade Cards; Types of Card Production and Distribution; The Subject Matter of the Cards; Imperial and Foreign Issues; Rare Cards and Curiosities; Making a Collection; Storage and Classification; The Cigarette Card Trade; The Uses of Card Collecting; A Suggested Classification of Cigarette Cards.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJan 4, 2013
    ISBN9781447487333
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      Book preview

      Cigarette Cards and How to Collect Them - I. O. Evans

      columns.

      PART I.—THE CARDS

      CIGARETTE CARDS:

      AND HOW TO COLLECT THEM

      CHAPTER I

      THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CARDS

      (I) The Earliest (American) Cards

      THE earliest cigarette cards, like tobacco itself, came from America. It is not certain exactly how or why they came into being; no records are available, many of the firms of the period having lost their individuality and merged into one big combine. As early as 1884 cards are said to have been in existence; there were certainly many sets in vogue by 1888. These were similar to those of to-day in size and general appearance, bearing an illustration, attractive or amusing or interesting, on one side, and letterpress on the other. Some of them were also comparable to those of to-day in artistic quality.

      It was not at first the custom to print descriptions of the illustrations on the backs of the cards. Some—presumably, as in England, the earliest—bear advertisements of the cigarettes with which they were issued. Others, instead of a description of each individual card, bear a numbered list of all the cards in the set, or a few lines of appropriate verse. Occasionally, however, the modern system of descriptions was used.

      Besides these standard cards, about the size of five cigarettes, there were larger ones almost twice as long and as wide (2 1/2 by 4 1/4 inches), presumably issued with larger packets, or with boxes of cigarettes. These, however, do not seem to have been very successful, for only a few series are on record, mostly pictures of girls, curiously dressed in a style to be described later.

      In America, too, appeared also small folders, with pictures inside and their outsides coloured to represent various animal furs. A series of two hundred and forty cards of diamond shape are also on record.

      A number of the earliest card-issuing firms also produced a number of albums, mostly containing a dozen or so quarto-sized pages. Some of these gave on each page replicas of half a dozen cards, or thereabouts, in their natural (small) size. In some the cards are super-imposed on a larger picture, occupying a whole page, of some subject relevant to their series. In others, each page is a large-size replica of one single card. These albums may have been issued in exchange for a complete set of cards; or they may have been used by salesmen to give cigarette vendors an idea of the different series.

      Many of the subjects of these pioneer cards are similar to the favourite modern series. We find among them: Champions, Dogs of the World, Great World Leaders, Flags of all Nations, Indian Chiefs. A series of Savage and Semi-barbarous Races includes Rulers of Indian States (British India), who certainly would not be flattered by this description! Especially well represented are actors and actresses, music-hall artistes and dancing girls.

      EARLY AMERICAN CARDS

      A card in one of the earliest series, the head of an Old Virginian Planter, from the World’s Smokers Series, has attained immortality. It was used as a trade symbol, first by Allen & Ginter, and later by Richmond Cavendish, and to-day serves as an advertisement of the Richmond Gem brand. There were humorous series, including some comic Coins of all Nations, and playing cards ingeniously adapted to form the basis of amusing pictures.

      Among the early albums were some illustrating Natural History subjects: Birds of the Tropics, superimposed on page pictures of native methods of hunting; Game Birds of America; Song Birds of the World; Fish from American Waters. Industry was represented by an Illustrated Atlas, with maps and pictures; transport by Beacon Lights (Lighthouses); technology by the World’s Inventors. Noteworthy among miscellaneous subjects were an Album of the Paris Exhibition, The Napoleon Album, and a humorous series of quaint animal shadows cast by human hands.

      The patriotic spirit of the Americans was encouraged by a Liberty album, including stirring episodes from their nation’s early history—the Boston Tea Party, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the naval achievements of Paul Jones. Civic pride was fostered by pictures of General Government and State Capitol Buildings of the United States, superimposed in their album on the most famous architectural triumphs of the Old World. One unusual series, to which Britain seems to afford no parallel, consisted of portraits of Our Editors, each with a background formed by the title-page of his journal; in their album these were further superimposed on pictures illustrating the multifarious activities which go to the making of a modern newspaper.

      The compilers of some of these early series seem to have imagined that no subject could be of interest unless it were embellished with pictures of pretty girls. These, naturally, have many sets of their own: Actresses and Beauties, Dancing Women, Our Little Beauties, Dancing Girls of the World. In addition to these, the compilers had a curious trick of combining this same theme of feminine attractiveness with quite impersonal subjects. A series of Steamers has its cards divided into two halves; the ship occupies one, and the head of a charming young lady the other. A series of Fishers and Fish consists of old-style miniatures: a girl’s head very carefully and attractively drawn, a tiny body underneath, and a fish not very much larger than the body. There were sets of flags and girls, sets of flowers and girls’ heads, sets of stellar constellations and underdressed ladies. Queerest of all was International Signals, in which the flags of the naval code are stuck in the corner behind the desirable young person who takes up most of the card. In some cases the meaning of the signal seems more than significant: In Distress, Let Go the Buoy, Accident, Want Doctor, Anything Wrong? while the signal, I am on Fire, distinguishes a singularly austere and cold-looking female.

      Similarly, some of the albums are adorned with feminine faces or figures, often completely irrelevant to the subject of the series. Terrors of America dealt not with gangsters, but with small urchins engaged in various feats of boyish mischief—and interleaved with these were studies of girls’ heads, as much out of place as anything could be. An album, otherwise very pleasing, of City Flags, was disfigured by its cover, which showed the banners as being carried in procession by a band of chubby naked Cupids.

      The larger cards, in particular, illustrate the complete change in masculine taste during the last half-century. They, as well as some of the small cards, consisted of those studies, so dear to the lighter-minded of our grandfathers, of lightly-clad ladies in frills, bloomers, or inadequate kilts, with preposterous wasp-like waists and hour-glass figures, and carrying various incongruous implements. In a series of Sporting Girls, the girl who represents swimming was clad in an ill-fitting one-piece garment, girded by a belt; her hair flows free, and is adorned with a bow of ribbon, and she wears high-heeled shoes, while to complete the picture, a number of pieces of cork are tied at intervals round her! After this, it is not surprising to find the rowing girl carrying a huge gilt anchor at her waist. Such pictures may have been very thrilling to the males of the time, but to-day it is doubtful whether many men would regard them with more than distaste or a mild and perplexed amusement.

      Apart from an odd series or two on ships and architecture, Our Navy, for example, one of the greatest favourites among modern card subjects, is conspicuous by its absence—there are hardly any series to illustrate engineering. From this we may surely infer that card collecting had little vogue among American youth. Similarly, as the cards appeared intermittently, and were often exchangeable, sometimes for albums and sometimes for boxes of sweetmeats, we may likewise infer that they have not been over-popular in the land of their origin, the land which gave tobacco to the world. To attain their full development they had to cross the Atlantic.

      II.—The First British Cards

      Considering the enormous popularity of the cards to-day, it is surprising how humble was their beginning. Cigarettes, about fifty years ago, were sold, not as they are to-day in stout card packets, but in flimsy coverings of paper. In order to protect them and keep them from being crushed little slips of card about the size of five cigarettes were placed in the packets. These card stiffeners were at first blank, but obviously they were too suitable a medium for advertisement to be ignored.

      In 1887, Messrs W. D. & H. O. Wills were printing a few lines of wording on them, advertising the cigarettes they accompanied. By 1890 they had replaced the wording on one side of the card by a small copy of their packages. In 1894 they were issuing small replicas of eight of their showcards. About the same time, too, Messrs. Smith and Messrs. John Player & Son were likewise issuing advertisement cards.*

      Why these pure advertisements should have given place to pictures of more general interest is uncertain. It may be that one of the firms had discovered that people liked to collect complete sets of the different packings and showcards, which were by no means lacking in artistic appeal. It may be that Messrs. Ogdens had brought over to these islands some of the American cards, leaving their backs blank for their own advertisement to be added by a

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