Thanks very much to Adam Partington and Mark Watson at Futera for asking me to be involved with their upcoming collaboration with Taddy & Co. for their vintage collectible football cards.
You can watch our chat via the YouTube link above, or I have also written an article which you can read below:
In general, football cards are a tangible piece of football memorabilia, the ability to collect, swap/trade and even sell them, makes them exciting to all collectors and football supporters alike. For vintage cards, all the same applies but it can also help remind people of their childhood or just football of days gone by. The unusual places they were found, like inside packets of cigarettes, makes them more remarkable and interesting today. The sight of cigarettes being such a prominent part of football and advertising is as baffling as it is intriguing. Seeing that cigarettes could be seen as fashionable, cool, and even associated with sports is amazing, particularly in comparison to the blank packets and banned sponsorship in place for tobacco products today. It is the ability though, for these small cards to transport people back to a by gone era of football and society, that enthrals people and is why they are so adored and appreciated, even still today.
Taddy & Co was established by James Taddy in 1784. He sold tobacco, snuff, and tea, from his warehouse based in London. A year later, he joined with new partners and so, Taddy, Tomlin, Hatfeild and Friend was founded, and they remained a successful tobacco company up to James Taddy’s death in 1828. The company lived on despite James’ death, through his partners, and they remained a generous company for their workers, paying above the minimum wage and offering better working conditions than many of their competitors. The reason the company is still renowned and remembered though, is because of their collectible cards.
They first began producing cigarette cards in 1897, with their debut collection called ‘Actresses’. In 1907, their first football cards were released and a set of 595 cards entitled ‘Prominent Footballers’ were placed inside their cigarette packets. The iconic oval image of the players made them instantly recognisable and made Taddy’s a household name, further sets of football cards were later released in 1908 and 1913.
Despite the good working conditions provided, the workers joined a trade union inspired strike in 1920, the Taddy company owners informed the staff that the business would close if they followed through with the proposed strike. The staff ignored in an attempt to call their employers’ bluff, Taddy’s followed through with their threat and closed the business. The successful company suddenly ended and so did the football cards, just 13 years after the first football cards were produced. An abrupt end to a successful business and now collectible and flourishing card collection.
Many of the collectible cards of this era were placed inside packets of tobacco, snuff, tea as well as other brands who later placed them in sweet packets, chewing gum and alongside newspapers and magazines. The earliest period of the cards was always found in cigarette and tobacco products though. They were often used to stiffen the contents of the packets they were placed in, as well as providing a good opportunity to advertise their own company on the back of the collectible cards. Despite being aimed at men, the collectible nature of the cards enticed children to also want to collect, leading to many of the more confident children standing outside shops asking anyone leaving if they could have their cigarette cards. Parents would be bringing cards home for their children too, adding to their collections and excitement each day they returned home from work. The tobacco companies saw that this method of advertisement was providing extra brand loyalty and the growth in attraction to children meant more potential customers for the future too.
The swapping nature was definitely a part of Edwardian card collecting, as it is today. The tribal desire of wanting to collect ‘your’ team meant supporters would trade players from other teams to build a full set of their own team, then there would be the completionists who wanted to collect them all. The combination of parents being provided access to the cards and the children having to wait to see what they could get from parents or passers-by in the street, meant that the desire to complete sets of players was huge. Swaps would take place at home, in work, in the pub and in schools, no different to how card collecting is today, instead with a lack of internet and technology for travel meaning that cards were even more scarce and so, more desired.
There were over 1,400 cards produced by Taddy across the three produced sets on offer, the most sought after were the most successful Edwardian period football sides. Individual cards today can still fetch over £50 up to £100, per card. In early July, Liverpool’s Alex Raisbeck’s card sold for £155 on eBay, testament to the prominence of the cards amongst collectors today. Others like Warburton from Plymouth and Hewitt from Crystal Palace can attract high prices because of the scarcity of the printing. The London clubs were most popular due to the area in which the cards were produced and so they were most readily available. The combination of more popular modern-day teams and scarcity of the lesser produced players and clubs (such as Clapton Orient, New Brompton, and Woolwich Arsenal) has provided a staying power in the popularity and value of Taddys cards today.
There is a collection of sets known as the ‘Triple Crown’ which is sought after by collectors, it pits together the collections of Cope’s ‘Clips’ “Noted Footballers”, Taddy & Co. “Prominent Footballers” and Godfrey Phillips ‘Pinnace’ “Footballers” this collection of nearly 6,300 cards is seen as the holy grail of vintage football card collectors. It wasn’t just football in this period, the collections of actors, actresses and nature cards were also popular and aimed at different audiences. As well as rugby and cricket players that were also popular at the time. In America, American football cards were popular, but baseball cards were huge, all-in similar ways to promote tobacco brands, but the collectible nature of famous players made them highly sought after. Taddy also ran a series of Victoria Cross heroes with notable soldiers from the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Royalty, including princes and princesses from around the world. They were all relatively successful and inspired the collectors, but the football cards were by far the most successful and sought after.
The restoration of the Taddy & Co brand through the modern eyes of Futera provides an exciting opportunity for vintage card collectors and appreciators of football memorabilia history. Being able to combine legends of the game and some more modern greats through the iconic oval Taddy design will be sure to present a unique collaboration that has not been seen before.
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Peter Kenny Jones
@PeterKennyJones
https://peterkj.wixsite.com/football-historian
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