Turf Cigarette Cards

When I was a youngster one of my favourite pastimes was collecting cigarette packets. Litter bins were few and far between in those days and often you would find an empty packet lying in the street. Another likely place was around the pub yards. At that time cigarette packets did not have flip tops, therefore the front of the packets were easily cut off and were still in tact. They were then generally kept in a pile secured with an elastic band, or if you were lucky enough to have one, in one of the several tobacco tins which were also around at that time. The most popular cigarette brands included Players, Senior Service, Craven A, Goldflake, Woodbines and Players Weights etc, but the most popular with us young collectors was Turf. The reason being that printed inside every packet of Turf were picture cards, one card in a packet of 10 and two cards in a packet of 20. A series usually consisted of 50 cards and were all printed in a blue colour. The most popular series were the footballers, they were caricatures with large heads and small bodies. Other series included cricketers, film stars, aeroplanes and dogs. The great fun with these cards was having duplicates and swapping them with your friends. Turf were untipped cigarettes as it was several years later that filter-tipped cigarettes became popular.