Cigarette manufacturers in the last century used to insert a card into the paper packaging in order to provide some stiffness and help prevent the cigarettes from being crushed. It wasn’t long before these cards had pictures printed on them and sets of cards were produced for smokers (or more often than not, their children) to collect. Playgrounds were the scene of card swaps in order to collect the ones that you didn’t have, and indeed, cigarette cards were a valuable commodity!
As time went on, the cards became more and more elaborate, were no longer needed to stiffen the cigarette packets and different manufacturers vied to produce the most interesting sets of cards.
Jersey had its own cigarette manufacturer and so what better to include on their sets were Jersey scenes as Jersey’s tourism industry was growing quickly. The Jersey Past and Present cards had three series. My album covers Series 1 and 2 and “Present” dates from about 1960, some 60 years ago.
The “Past” are therefore about mid-nineteenth century.
If you want to see a pdf of the while album, click the link below:
