I WANT FOOTBALL

Cigarette Cards

Trading Cards of one description or another have been around almost as long as organised, professional football itself. Blank card was first introduced into cigarette packets in the 1870's, initially as a means of providing protection for their addictive contents. By 1876 this idea had evolved into using illustrations for advertising purposes, with this idea taken further to including series of cards so that the smoker would perhaps be more inclined to continue with a particular brand.

In 1887 the Wills Company was the first British outfit to use such cards. Initially they were used to advertise the company's products, but in 1896 they brought out the first set with a sporting theme with a set of 50 cricketers. Wills's first 'football' set was released in 1902 and featured no less than 66 cards, featuring 41 footballers and 25 rugby players, with such luminaries of the day as Steve Bloomer (nr. 9!), William (W.J. or "Fatty") Foulkes (nr. 18), Alex Raisbeck (nr. 24) and Billy Meredith (nr. 37).

PLAYER Football MAC Caricatures Arsenal BOB JOHN old cigarette card No 19
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PLAYER Football MAC Caricatures Aston Villa YORK old cigarette card No 37
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PLAYER Football MAC Caricatures Barrow CARR old Rugby cigarette card No 39
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Ogden's, a Liverpool company, also included cards with their cigarettes and in fact were ahead of Wills with their first set of photographic cards. Their first football set from them was released in 1906 and was called 'Football Club Colours' and featured (in colour) players from the likes of Everton, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Aston Villa. In 1910 Ogden's released another set, this time of football club badges, but it was to be another 16 years before they next issued cards with footballers, this time entitled 'Captains of Association Football Clubs and Colours'.

In the early part of the twentieth century the market in cigarette cards depicting footballers was relatively busy. The aforementioned Wills and Ogden companies were joined by Singleton & Cole (Shrewsbury), Cohen Weenan, Churchman, Lacey's, John Player and Sons, Gallaher's (Belfast and London), Godfrey Phillips, Carreras and others in producing cards featuring the football stars of the day. However, the second world war put paid to the production of such items - ostensibly to save paper (for propganda purposes?)