COIN CIGARETTE CARDS

As always, a fascinating "issue" to read! Almost good enough to get over not be able to hold it in your hands and turn the pages!

The coin postcards were interesting. Last year while I was in London I picked up a set of something close, but a bit different -- a set of coin-related cigarette cards. The Brits (who still seem to smoke far more than their US counterparts) were ahead of their time in marketing. What the US did with baseball cards they did with cigarette cards. The leading brands would put one card in each pack of their cigarettes, and people found out that it was fun to collect something (and bought more smokes as a result). There were a wide variety of sets issues, usually 50 cards to a set. Movie start, athletes, flowers, birds, architecture from across the world -- pretty much anything that had enough things available to put out a set of cards was pressed into service!

Unfortunately they didn't do a set of "rarest coins of the world" -- think how valuable that would be today! But they did come close, and the Wills' Cigarette Company issued a set of 50 cards in 1908 called "Time and Money." Each card showed a representative of a country, in native dress, with a coin showing the main unit of currency there and a clock showing its time in relation to England (of course).

I've attached a picture of the framed set that includes the United States -- apparently the average Yank in 1908 was not that interesting, so they chose to go with an Indian chief -- which would have been in short supply in most parts of the country at the time. NOT in short supply would be the Morgan dollar used to illustrate our currency (then or now).

I was surprised to find full sets of various cards not that expensive. I brought back a few sets for my mother (one of flowers and a framed set of 5 cards depicting trains that were in their original cigarette company frame), and bought this and another set for me -- the coin one was the most expensive at 25 Pounds, the rest were 10-20 Pounds. Like baseball cards, these were highly collected, but today don't seem to be very popular -- though they look really great mounted and framed!

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: MORE ON NUMISMATIC POSTCARDS AND ALBUMS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n03a12.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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