Cigarette Card Information

Background History of Cigarette and Trade Cards

Sir Walter Raleigh brought the tobacco leaf to England and introduced smoking, primarily to the aristocracy. With industrialization and improved farming methods, the product soon became available to all classes of society. The first use of any type of card began in the eighteenth century as a form of advertising by tradesmen. Cigarette cards were initially used as stiffeners to the soft packets of cigarettes but very rapidly assumed the advertising aspect previously reserved for trades people. The next step in the evolution of cards was to print some form of pictorial information with or without associated descriptive detail, in addition to the direct cigarette advertising. The concept of a series of cards on the same subject matter, was a clever approach to stimulate cigarette sales and ultimately led to the hobby of cigarette card collecting (cartophily). The firm W D and H O Wills was the first British company to produce cards in England in 1888. John Player and Sons followed in quick succession. In the last decade of the nineteenth century the biggest firm, Ogden's, had developed its own cards. In fact in 1894, it introduced the Guinea Gold card which, over a period of 13 years, produced thousands of photographs of politicians, war leaders and various people accomplished in the cultural spheres of life.