Is there a guide that covers UK Trading Cards? Weetabix, Basset, Cadet Sweets, Brooke Bond, etc. I see a lot of cool looking stuff around but I have very little knowledge about them.

Indeed there is/was a UK card guide. It was called Gum Guide as I recall (and I've got one somewhere). It definitely ran to two editions but that was a few years ago and I don't know what happened after that. I do recall that it had a number of mistakes in it and I started to make a list of them for the author so that future editions would be improved. But it just turned out to be too many and I gave up. There is a Buffy promo that was exclusive to the book B6 - GG from Season 6

You can contact Paul hart through this forum. He's the author an would be happy to sell you a copy. (10% commission please Paul :-D )

Chris, I refer regularly to my autographed copy of Paul's guide. But it's not the only resource for a lot of the UK "product issue" cards. Gum Guide focuses on film/TV/cartoon related sets. Another resource I use regularly is "Cigarette Card Values" published by Murray Cards, recently acquired by our old correspondent Darren Epstein. About 60% of the 320+-page book is related to tobacco-card releases, but the other 40% is a good catalog for non-tobacco issues. They just published their "2013" guidebook under the new ownership, and you can see it at the murraycards.com website. London Cigarette Cards at londoncigcard.co.uk also publishes a great set of guides, with different ones for tobacco-related issues and non-tobacco "trade cards" and they even delve into some of the hobby sets covered by the NSU guide. You can get a lot of information just from their websites, but either one's main guides will be a great start. If you want to get even more specific you can see some specialty guides through the Cartophilic Society of Great Britain, at www.csgb.co.uk.

Caution: These guides also served as catalog(ue)s for what the big companies had in stock or could acquire. The two I mention have/had the biggest inventories. I haven't seen the 2013 Murray catalog and am still using the 2011/12 catalog from before Mr. Murray retired and sold the company; a lot of the stock was sold before Darren acquired the assets, and I don't know if all of those sets are still listed. You might consider a recent (but "obsolete") version of one of these guides from eBay or AbeBooks. Once you get started, you want them all ... But when you're focusing on trade/tea/tobacco cards you don't always need to know about the latest hobby releases, and a guide from 2010 or earlier can be helpful.
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Thanks

Chris

I have some of old the catalogues Allender refered to also and as a member of the Cartophilic Society I also have most of the reference books produced by the society. Is there something you need to know specifically? If so you can email me and I will try to help.

In addition the Cartophilic society website Allender also referred shows photographs from our 2012 AGM and convention amongst which ia a picture of Martin Murray and Darren Epstein.

regards

John

Loved rummaging to the bottom of the PG tips for the tea cards (my mum was never too pleased). Forgot about the Weetabix cards. I remember different characters and some athletic based activities

quote:

Originally posted by JOHN LEVITT:

In addition the Cartophilic society website Allender also referred shows photographs from our 2012 AGM and convention amongst which ia a picture of Martin Murray and Darren Epstein.

But the photos drive home the fact that we are an aging part of the population. I see an old version of the Murray catalog in the photo next to Martin and Darren, which supports my point that there aren't all that many *new* sets in the categories Chris asked about!

I have to admit that I'm a sometimes junkie for the genre. Photo sets for new movies are nice, but the traditional tobacco/tea/trade cards are packed with information. And there may be plenty of rare old card sets, but there also are a huge number of complete sets that are darn cheap. I bought about 270 complete sets when Murray had their shop-closing sale, and they were sold out of about half again as many that I tried to order. My cost was from £1-£4 per complete set, averaging 25 cards because I was going for bulk rather than scarcity. The complete sets went back as far as 1925.

One of the new sets was the Cartophilic Society's "London Branch Personalities" from 1980, so I've already had a chance to blackmail the subject of card #7, "Paul Hart", then barely a teenager.

This is an excellent side of the hobby that is very inexpensive if people want to dip their toes in the water.
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Just following this thread and Jeff's comments about the joy of collecting the older sets made me wonder, how many on this forum actively collect cigarette cards and/or early food/tea issues.

I used to collect 45rpms (in a very large way!) and there was always a huge divide between the 78rpm collector and the rest of us.

Is there that kind of divide between card collectors? I must say that I have considered cigarette card collecting but have never made the leap for a variety of reasons (wrong sized cards, different sized pages to keep them in, availability in any kind of mint condition etc)

As for cereal cards, I used to have a huge collection but quit them because they couldn't compete with gum cards. I have no regrets about that.

So what do you guys collect outside of costume cards from Hunger Games??

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
Just following this thread and Jeff's comments about the joy of collecting the older sets made me wonder, how many on this forum actively collect cigarette cards and/or early food/tea issues.

I used to collect 45rpms (in a very large way!) and there was always a huge divide between the 78rpm collector and the rest of us.

Is there that kind of divide between card collectors? I must say that I have considered cigarette card collecting but have never made the leap for a variety of reasons (wrong sized cards, different sized pages to keep them in, availability in any kind of mint condition etc)

As for cereal cards, I used to have a huge collection but quit them because they couldn't compete with gum cards. I have no regrets about that.

So what do you guys collect outside of costume cards from Hunger Games??

I also collect cigarette/tea cards, only started doing this about three years ago.

btlfannz: They may be "wrong sized cards", but they make 20-pocket pages for them.

I probably wouldn't have gotten very involved if there hadn't been so many complete sets available for older material. And I admit to settling for non-mint sets if they're from 1925 and only cost US$5. (Sets, sets, sets, that's all guys think about. ...)

quote:

Originally posted by allender:
btlfannz: They may be "wrong sized cards", but they make 20-pocket pages for them.

I probably wouldn't have gotten very involved if there hadn't been so many complete sets available for older material. And I admit to settling for non-mint sets if they're from 1925 and only cost US$5. (Sets, sets, sets, that's all guys think about. ...)

the price is one of the things that got me started. Even with the exchange rate I can still get them pretty cheap. I also like the sets with art better and there are a lot in these.