Newsletter #58: August 2020

Another highlight from my collection... UNKNOWN ‘FULL COLOUR FOOTBALL VIEWER’ (Series No. 1) (c1970)

Uncertainty surrounds this, one of a set of nine different plastic viewers in a variety of colours shaped as little TV sets (it’s actually only 3.2 x 2.9 x 1.5 cms in size). The idea is that you hold it up to the light and look through the two little windows, then turn the little black wheel at the top and you see tiny illuminat- ed images of famous footballers. Each window allows access to a different selection of players: my partic- ular one has pictures of Town’s Ray Mielczarek, Jimmy McGill and Dennis Clarke, along with West Ham’s in the left window, whilst Town’s Jimmy Lawson, Chelsea’s Ron Harris, Manchester City’s and , , Eddie Gray and Paul Madeley, all of United, appear in the right window. I have no idea why there should be only four pictures in one window and seven in the other.

This particular viewer is identified by the Harris picture as SERIES NO. 1 and the presence of Mielczarek is what prompts me to date this to 1970 - he left for Rotherham United in summer 1970- together with the fact that the other pictures in the other viewers reflect teams in the First Division in 1970-71. A further three Town players appeared on other viewers: Geoff Hutt (Viewer 7); and Terry Poole (Viewer 9).

Originally sold for 6d each, I paid £15 for mine a few years ago, whilst a complete box together with 48 viewers sold on eBay in August 2017 for £395.00.

You can find out a little more about this very rare item at Nigel Mercer’s website HERE and on Alan Jen- kins’ site HERE (from whence these photographs came).

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Latest acquisitions With Town’s relegation from the English Premier League in May 2019 new items have been a lot harder to come by. However here’s a peek at what has recently arrived at Pashby Hall. This beer mat dates to around 2003 and certainly falls between the two that I already possessed. The letters “AFC” have been removed from the motto and I know that this oc- curred in the early part of the 2000s. I am grateful to Jim Clarke who supplied me with it; in fact, I have two and so if you want one of these, please check my FOR SALE section.

Next to arrive was the picture at left. It’s a full page (approximately 200mm x 130mm) cut out from an early/mid 1947 unknown booklet and it shows Town right-half George Green, a player who made only seven appearances for the club early in the 1947/48 season although he was involved in an unusual incident where he replaced goalkeeper Bob Hesford after he was injured during the home game against Chelsea in September 1947, a game which Town went on to win 3-1. It came from eBay and cost me just £1.25.

And another eBay purchase dropped through the letter box in mid-June. I have long been on the lookout for the SCORE’N’ROAR comic at right which features Town players Trevor Cher- ry, Les Chapman and Roy Ellam in the opening game of the 1970/71 season against Blackpool at Leeds Road. Having ignored one copy at £7.99 (exclusive of p&p) I finally found this one at £1.99 - much more to my liking!

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Auction Watch - HTAFC items Sometimes I notice some really interesting auction items related to Town and I bring them to your attention here; occasionally you might be lucky enough to still have time to bid on them. Beware, though, as there will be Buyer’s Premiums to pay on them, sometimes as high as 20%! The photograph at right appeared just too late to be included in last month’s newsletter. An unofficial photograph stuck to an identifying piece of paper, it shows a view of the crowd for the Burnley vs Huddersfield Town FAC 3rd Round game on 23rd Feb- ruary 1924 which was - and still is- Burnley’s biggest ever home attendance. And on that note, there is a technical error here- the attached paper clearly says the date was “February 24th” but that is incorrect. The photo sold on eBay for an amazing £92.00!

The letter on official HTAFC headed notepaper at left was sent - and hand-signed by - Town Secretary-Manager Her- bert Chapman on 16th October, 1923 to Mr. J. Lish of Prudhoe Castle FC. It seems to be in relation to Town taking a player called White with Town forwarding £10 to Prudhoe in return. The club certainly had plenty of dealings with north-eastern clubs during this period, securing many fine players in the process, most notably Billy Smith and Tom Wil- son. It was listed as a Buy-It-Now item on eBay on 22nd July for £200 but failed to sell. This beautiful official Steward’s badge was produced for the 1928 FAC Final between Town and Blackburn Rovers. It sold on 25th July on eBay for £67.00 having started at a mere £0.99!

And then a bit of a strange one. The two Turton postcards at left might look familiar- they should as they were sold at Lockdales on 18th June for a combined total of £76.00 (excluding fees). Well, they went up for auction yet again on 31st July as one lot with an opening bid price of £30 and an auctioneer’s estimate of £50-£55. I can only guess that the original winning bidder must have defaulted on the pay- ments. Anyway, this time around they were passed on- they didn’t even reach the £30 opening bid.

And another HTAFC badge, this time a rare Supporters’ Club Committee member badge with no apparent fixing, appeared on eBay as a Buy-it-Now item in late July for £69.99. I already have one of these but I was nev- ertheless surprised at the asking price.

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Auction Watch - other interesting items And now a slightly different selection of items as and when I find them! I was also recently sent the photograph at left by Everton fan and collector Paul Chauveau. It shows three trimmed sheets of DC Thomson Wizard Football Sticky-Backs from 1927 which he picked up for on eBay for the staggeringly low price of £12.99! Individual stamps can go for around £20 each so to get these at that price beggars belief. Paul was especially pleased as the third sheet includes the large sticker of .

Paul also flagged-up this 1915 Ogden’s Club Col- ours Badge (right) which he saw on eBay in early July. Available from Garry Daynes’ 2018 FCCM catalogue for £15, this badge nevertheless reached the astonishing heights of £400.00!

eBay again and a seller had the two cards at left here for sale initially at £1.99 each. The Barratt “Football Stars” dates to 1928 and is one of a very rare set and even though condition wasn’t great it still went for £14.68. The other card is from the Barratt1928 “Football Action Cari- catures” series and features Everton’s Dixie Dean. I was very surprised to see that it only reached £5.50 - I had been expecting much more even with the poor condition.

The growing trend of charging exorbitant prices for modern “rare” cards continues to grind my gears. Burnley fan and collector Mike McIntyre drew my attention to this 2020 Panini Chronicles CON- TENDERS CRACKED ICE Signature card of Dwight McNeil (right). It is signed and numbered 13/23 and whilst I’ll admit it does look very nice with all of its spangled effects Mike assures me that he won’t be parting with his £911.16 (€995.99) any time soon to own it!

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Other football cards As I know that there are several subscribers to this newsletter who are neither HTAFC fans nor collectors I try to include other football cards or items that I have which will throw the spotlight on other collectable items and/or teams. Here’s another … BARRATT & CO. LTD. ‘Football Stars’ (1928 and 1929) Trade Ref: BAR-430 / BAR-34A / BAR-34Ab / BAR-34Ba / BAR-34Bb 100 cards (2 series of 50 cards in each) Approximate size: 61mm x 35mm Now here’s a lovely set of cards if you can ever find them. They really are quite rare and will set you back around £50-£60 each if you buy from dealer catalogues although you might find them cheaper in online auctions such as eBay. But be warned - some of the premier cards can fetch up to £300 once various collectors go up against one another. In fact the Dixie Dean card shown here sold for £500 in early 2020!! There are known to have been two sets as some players appear more than once for different clubs. As with the photographic series of the earlier 1920s, there were also four different backs available, although players only ever appeared with two different backs . Cards are often grubby and creased but they are so hard to find that you will just have to pick up what you can when you see it in the (forlorn?) hope of eventually finding a better one. You can see many more of the cards in this set on my 1920s Heaven website at https://1920sheaven.wordpress.com/football-stars-1st-series/

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A highlight from YOUR collection In what will probably only ever be an occasional series, I am now offering YOU the chance to tell us about your very own ‘highlight’. Following on previous articles comes this one from Man- City fan and collector Brian Houghton. REFEREE APPOINTMENT POSTCARD (18th October 1924)

Brian recently sent me these photographs and although he hasn’t specifically chosen to write about them I feel that they are worthy of being shared with others, so it was my decision to put them in this month’s newsletter. It’s a very unusual item and one of a very select genre of collectables of which I suspect there won’t be many other examples around. I’ve never seen one of these before and I doubt that I ever will. Obviously Brian sent me the photographs because of the HTAFC connection, something that he hadn’t noticed until recently. I have no idea as to what it cost him but I suspect that it wasn’t cheap, especially since it dates to what I would always refer to as the “Golden Age” of football, the 1920s. What a unique item! https://huddersfieldtowncollection.wordpress.com/ 6

Colourise your favourite photograph! Have you ever wished that your favourite football photograph had been in colour? Well now’s your chance to make that a reality... Paul Days, author of the many Pinnace Collection books - I co-wrote the HTAFC one with him - is offering a bespoke service whereby you submit a scan of your prized photograph to him and he will colourise it for you. Here are a few examples of just how good these can look… The first picture is a 1950/51 HTAFC team group; the second shows a Pinnace ‘cabinet’ card of Durham City’s Arthur Andrews; and, finally, a postcard of a very young Town legend Clem Stephenson guesting for Leeds City during World War 1 whilst on Aston Villa’s books.

The procedure is that you contact Paul using his email ad- dress [email protected] sending him a scan of the picture that you want colourising and he will do the job for you. His terms are: · Individual player postcard (i.e. Pinnace cabinet card or other) = £10-£15 · Team group pictures = £25-£30 · Action photographs = £25-£30 I am presuming that payment will be via PayPal and the resulting colourised scans will be returned to you by email. Should you want them printing for framing purposes, an A4 print would cost £5.99 (plus p&p), an A3 sized print would be £9 (plus p&p) and each would come to you protected in tubular card packaging, ready to frame and sub- sequently adorn your wall. If you require further details please feel free to contact Paul - not me! - at the address above. Please also mention either me or this newsletter if you do. https://huddersfieldtowncollection.wordpress.com/ 7

And now a blatant plug for my other websites which might be of interest to you, the discerning reader/collector/Town fan!

The first of my ‘other’ websites, this site focused on the myriad cards in the sets pro- Once again, Matt Stevens was the person duced by Godfrey Phillips in the early 1920s. who encouraged me to create this website, I have images of every one of the small (k- and he it was who supplied all of the images sized) cards as well as some of the ridicu- of the cards. A highly sought after set - well, lously rare team cards (the latter being sup- three actually - these cards come at a very plied by supercollector Matt Stevens). It’s a high price for the collector and are becoming set which is very easy and cheap to get into but very soon harder to find as the years go by and they becomes increasingly expensive once you have made the de- are squirrelled away into binders and boxes in lofts and attics. cision about what to collect - just the football? Just the small Simple but very beautiful cards covering football, rugby and cards? All of the variations? The different backs? The larger even the FA officials! cards? The ‘Cabinet’ cards? Visit this website by copying and pasting this link Visit this website by copying and pasting this link https:// https://taddyprominentfootballers.wordpress.com/ pinnacecards.wordpress.com/

Driven by my love of early football trade My latest project features the three sets cards I decided to set up a website dedi- of cards issued between 1909 and 1911 cated solely to them. My aim - the site is by Cope’s Cigarettes. As with the Taddy still incomplete and will probably remain set mentioned previously, Matt Stevens so - is to provide images of every card pro- has been the driving force behind this duced during this era; a gargantuan task, I site and has provided all of the images of am sure you will agree. However, slowly the cards. With prices varying between but surely I am adding images as and when £3-£4 for poor quality cards to £200+ for I find them on the internet, most usually the likes of of and from eBay where it seems that everything becomes available of Manchester United, this is not a set to begin for sale eventually! collecting unless you are backed by some serious money!

Many issues are covered here although there are still many Visit this website by copying and pasting this link gaps in the images. https://copesclipsfootballcards.car.blog/ Visit this website by copying and pasting this link https://1920sheaven.wordpress.com/

And here is my latest brain-child, a website dedicated to the great little magazines that accompanied match-day pro- grammes between 1965 and 1976. It’s going to be a long old job and one which will require me to skim-read all of the arti- cles to get a general idea of what they are about. My aim is to provide a searchable database by club, player, or topic together with scans of the cover, ‘Club Call’ feature and any team group or player action pictures. With 30+ issues in each volume - of which there are nine! - and then some variations, I can see me busy well into 2021. Visit the site at https://footballleaguereview410205305.wordpress.com/

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For Sale As ever, it would be remiss of me not to mention this section of the website, just in case I hap- pen to have the one thing that you've been looking for.

I also have several spare posters, fanzines, calendars, merchandising catalogues, and fixture cards for sale now. There are too many to list in great detail here but if you visit my FOR SALE section you will see what’s available. The good news is that everything is now POST FREE and I am open to you wanting to haggle if you are buying several items in one go.

And whilst we’re here, I suppose that anytime is a good time to plug my book. I now knock them out at £4.75 (p&p included) which still represents good value. Having said that, I strongly suspect that all recipients of this newsletter already own a copy so I'm almost certainly preaching to the converted. However, you might just be looking for something for that other Town fan that you know who may not own a copy. Anyway, you can pick up one up - or several if you like as the postage is still only £1.75 no matter how many you buy! - by visiting the appropriate section of my website.

Finally, a big ‘thank you’ for taking the time to read this and I hope that it has encouraged you to have a look at my site and find something of interest. I should also point out that you can leave COMMENTS on there so please do; you'll join various luminaries such as Reece Dinsdale and the descendants of Town players of old. And re- member - if you come across anything that you think might interest me, please get in touch; we might be able to strike a deal! Roger https://huddersfieldtowncollection.wordpress.com/ 9