Beginning in 1875, cards depicting actresses, baseball players, Indian chiefs, and boxers were issued by the U.S.-based Allen and Ginter tobacco company. These are considered to be some of the first cigarette cards. Other tobacco companies such as Goodwin & Co. soon followed suit. They first emerged in the U.S., then the UK, then, eventually, in many other countries.
In the UK, W.D. & H.O. Wills in 1887 were one of the first companies to include advertising cards with their cigarettes, but it was John Player & Sons in 1893 that produced one of the first general interest sets ‘Castles and Abbeys’. Thomas Ogden soon followed in 1894 and in 1895, Wills produced their first set ‘Ships and Sailors’, followed by ‘Cricketers' in 1896. In 1906, Ogden’s produced a set of football cards depicting footballers in their club colours, in one of the first full-colour sets.
Each set of cards typically consisted of 25 or 50 related subjects, but series of over 100 cards per issue are known. Popular themes were 'beauties' (famous actresses, film stars and models), sporters (in the U.S. mainly baseball, in the rest of the world mainly football and cricket), nature, military heroes and uniforms, heraldry and city views.
Today, for example, sports and military historians study these cards for details on uniform design.
Some very early cigarette cards were printed on silk which was then attached to a paper backing. They were discontinued in order to save paper during World War II, and never fully reintroduced thereafter.
The system devised to codify 19th Century American tobacco issues has its origin in the ‘American Card Catalog’ (ACC), written by Jefferson Burdick. Burdick listed the American Tobacco Cards in one section, broken down by companies that issued the card series and by the types of cards. The 19th Century issues were prefixed with ‘N’ (N1-N694) and the 20th with ‘T’. (T1-T235).
Notes: This set included 25 cards issued by John Player and Sons Tobacco company. Cards are app. 2" X 3 1/2". They feature actual golfers and are also instructional in nature as they provided tips on a variety of golf swings.
Backs of the cards simply title the series as ‘Golf’ and give a description of the type of shot that is pictured on the front.
Cards are similar to an earlier Player and Sons set – a 1936 tennis issue that featured a pair of cartoon images along with a full color picture of a particular player. The cards are similar but still quite a bit different, however. The tennis cards were narrow with green backgrounds while these were larger with white backgrounds.
Many of the big names in golf from the 1930s are not found in this set so it is one of the less expensive ones. However, a few Hall of Famers are found, including Percy Alliss and Henry Cotton.
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