Newsletter #42: April 2019 Another highlight from my collecon... FA CUP WINNERS’ AUTOGRAPHS Oh dear! Although these are quite clearly seven lovely autographs of Town players, the pictures have been cut from a page of an actual 1922 FAC Final programme; someone dropped an extremely expensive clanger in cung it up! Just to give you some kind of indicaon as to the scale of the blunder here, 1922 FA Cup Final programmes go for well over £1000 each these days. The seven autographs are of (from top le ) goalkeeper Sandy Mutch, Jack Wood, Charlie Slade, Tom Wilson, George Richardson, Ernie Islip and Billy Smith. All are in excellent condion and the item is a much-prized piece of my collecon. hps://huddersfieldtowncollecon.wordpress.com/ 1 Latest acquisitions Lots of cards and sckers have been published with Town being members of The Premier League but it should be noted that other items do occasionally crop up regardless of that. Here’s a peek at what has recently arrived here at Pashby Hall. What I presume will be the very last cards/sckers to collect for a few years are now out. March 14th saw the release of the Topps ‘ Match Aax Update 2018/19’ series and eight Town players featured. In a few weeks you'll be able to snag all of these in one fell swoop for just a few pence but for now they come in at about £1.00 each. Anyway, the only card worth flagging-up from this sub-set is the one shown here of Elias Kachunga - except that it isn’t him! It’s actually Steve Mounié and once again this just goes to show that Topps can’t be bothered to re- search the “smaller clubs” properly. Last year they inexplicably mixed- up Tommy Smith and Mark Hudson, this year it’s Kachunga and Moun- ié. I don’t know of any examples at other clubs where the wrong play- er appears and for it to happen TWICE to HTAFC is just plain lazy on Topps’ part. It’s a bit sad really, that having waited all these years for some decent cards to collect they make such a bollocks of things. And then a er just two years it’s all set to vanish again for Town, but I sup- pose that I can count myself lucky that we weren’t successful and com- peng in the Champions League where there is an absolute multude of cards every year. And let’s not start on the “super players” such as Ronaldo, Messi, and their like where there are hundreds of cards of each individual to collect every year. Another couple of posters turned up in Match of the Day magazine and it was a nice change to see the ever -dependable and all round good guy German le -back Chris Lowe finally make an appearance. This was fol- lowed by an A4 colour picture of debutant Aaron Rowe. I wonder if we’ll be treated to one of goal- scorer Karlan Grant before season’s end? Finally, two offi- cially produced ‘signed’ photo- graphs appeared on eBay towards the end of March in amongst a ra of team groups and individual player shots. The first was a small image of Les Smith who was at Town between 1946 and 1949 although he only played for the first two of those three seasons. This one came in at £10.00, but the larger image of Jack Howe (right) was purchased for £12.00 down from £22.00 because I bought the pair. This one matches a couple of others that I have from around 1950 of Johnny McKenna and Ron- nie Burke and can be prey much pinned down as 1950 because Howe only played for Town in 1950-51 and these sort of items tended to be produced at the start of the season when the weather was good. hps://huddersfieldtowncollecon.wordpress.com/ 2 Auction Watch Somemes I noce some really interesng aucon items related to Town and I bring them to your aenon here; occasionally you might be lucky enough to sll have me to bid on them. Beware, though, as there will be Buyer’s Premiums to pay on them, somemes as high as 20%! Three autographed Turton postcards appeared on eBay in mid-March. Condion on two was not parcular- ly good with one torn and the other very grubby, however the fact that the torn one was of Town legend Bil- ly Smith probably boosted the auc- on to the final price of £63.60. I bid £45 as I need the Frank Mann card; I already have autographed cards of Smith and Willie Watson. I suppose there is a strong possibility that these will resurface individually. Also on eBay there was a plethora press photographs of Town team groups and individuals. Each of these was priced in the £30-£70 bracket and although I needed a few of the team groups I didn’t bid. I did, how- ever, buy two of the individual player cards and they can be seen in the ‘Latest Acquisions’ secon of this newsleer. A 1929-30 ‘Coming Of Age’ souvenir brochure also sold on eBay during March. I used to think that these were quite rare but several have turned up over the last few years which makes me reconsider my view. Anyway, this was in decent condion for its age and was a bargain at £46.30 (excluding p&p). For those of you who are una- ware as to its contents, the booklet celebrated Town’s first 21 years (having been formed in 1908) and includes photographs of every team/squad in that me. Other pictures include the original stand and the erecon of the new Leeds Road stand together with photos of the FA Cup, the Board of Directors, and the Boardroom itself. It’s a lovely item. And that’s prey much it I’m afraid, other than the standard 1930 and 1938 FAC Final programmes and nu- merous pre-war ‘home’ programmes at ludicrous asking prices. It would seem that general HTAFC memorabilia is becoming prey thin on the ground these days but you can be sure that if and when any does become available you’ll be able to find it in these pages. hps://huddersfieldtowncollecon.wordpress.com/ 3 I wish that I owned this There are many collectables out there that I know feature Town or individual players, as well as many football items in general. As part of an on-going series, I present for you here one or more of the items that I would love to add to my collecon. AGFA ‘Footballers’, Channel Printers, Guernsey (c1970-71) I know that it’s really difficult to see, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that this really is Frank Worthington in the picture at right. The image comes from Carl Wilkes’ Football Soccer Cards Price Guide website (which you will find here: hps://www.italiafrance.eu/cards.htm ) The picture is aached to a packet of AGFA photographic prints which you would have received from your local Boots or wherever you might have taken your old roll of film to in order to have it developed so that you could then bore your friends and family with slls of your holiday in Benidorm or Costa del Sol. As can be seen in the more de- tailed image below the footballer picture was the flap part of the ‘ pocket’ which would have held the developed photographs; apparently these became de- tached quite easily anyway so it was no hardship if you needed to remove it to add it to your collecon. Alan Jenkins has included one of these on his website, #121. Mike Channon (below) which would appear to be the only other known “card”. Obviously we don’t know how many were in the set and the number on the Worthington item is illegible, so perhaps we shall never know, but clearly there were at least 121! Anyway, this parcular one from Carl’s site has been adversed for donkeys’ years now but even he doesn't actually have it - it never materialised from the chap who was offering it up for sale! As such, I have no idea as to its value. I’ve never seen one of these and now I don’t expect that I ever shall. hps://huddersfieldtowncollecon.wordpress.com/ 4 Other football cards As I know that there are several subscribers to this newsleer 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 … NELSON LEE LIBRARY “Footballers (plates)” (1921-22) These ten large - approximately 86mm x 128mm - dark green paper ‘ plates’ were issued across the back end of 1921 and into the beginning of 1922. A parallel set of ten was issued in Scosh edions of the pa- per. They are very hard to track down and will set you back a decent price if and when you do actually see one; whilst Murray don’t list them (as far as I can ascertain) Football Card Collector Magazine will ask you for £15 for each one that they stock. They pre-date the more regular and common Nelson Lee “Footballers ” which are the small cards issued in pairs (and covered in my Newsleer #36). Having said that there are ten in the set I can only find images of five on the internet, and no Scosh ones at all.