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 colors, in one of the first full-color 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).
Cards are approximately 1-3/8" x 2-5/8". The Player and Sons’ Wrestling & Ju-Jitsu set was one of the few to exclusively feature the sport of wrestling in the pre-war era. Wrestling cards were included in many sets but there aren’t many that feature the sport as much as this set. Technically, all 25 cards in the set are wrestling cards. But the last five are called Wrestling – Ju-Jitsu Style.
The release includes both wrestling and Ju-Jitsu cards with each card featuring a specific hold.
One key distinction of this set is that it was released two different times. The first set was initially released in 1913 while the second was in 1925. The cards can easily be distinguished as the 1913 cards have blue ink backs while the 1925 cards have gray ink backs. Some sources call the 1913 cards a 1911 issue.
Despite the two different release points, all cards have the same fronts and the same titles.
The cards all feature two men – always with red or blue shorts and trunks. The men have white shirts on some cards with no shirts on others.
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