Ardath Tobacco - Famous Footballers (02) - Player Biographies

1934

Famous Footballers

Ardath Tobacco (Ardath Cork Cigarettes / State Express 333 Cigarettes)

50 cards

Cigarette companies and other businesses that used to use cards to create interest in their products, often produced albums so the cards could be collected safely and securely. This concept seems almost abhorrent to current collectors who like to keep their cards in pristine condition, but that was how things were for card collectors from the 1920's through to the 1980's. As well as providing a space to glue the card, the album pages also reprint the information or biography provided on the back of the card. Most albums faithfully reproduce the text on the cards but this album is different and, for football collections, may be unique. In most cases, the biographies printed in this album differ considerable from what appears on the cards. For many a sentence has been removed or edited, with the missing information usually referring to the player's early career. Though one or two include more recent exploits. I presume the biographies were written before the cards were designed and when the printers were working on the card backs they discovered that these texts were too long and needed to be edited. I have included photos of all the cards attached to the album pages and added scans of the actual card backs, showing the differences in what appears in the album compared to what appears on the cards.

The checklist for this collection can be found here - Ardath Tobacco - Famous Footballers.