The History of AFL Footy Cards - 'Know Your History' with Shannon Gill (03.04.25)

and random.

It is.

So if you go right back, the earliest sort of knowledge I can find of cigarette cards.

Now, cigarette cards in a cricket sense go way back.

But 1894, the American Tobacco Company created a set of cigarettes celebrity cards that they would include with cigarette packets.

And this include a couple, included a couple of footy players from around Australia.

So there's ones from Adelaide.

There's a, there was an Essendon player called Bill Krebit, and this is a card that sold for about $10,000, um, a little, a little while ago.

And the cigarette cards continued.

So this is something that was started overseas.

It simply started as a bit of card in a cigarette packet to stop it being crushed in transport.

So it then becomes a marketing tool and then it becomes something that they put sports people on or celebrities on.

And clearly the idea of sports people grew.

And I think there's a bigger history probably in a cricket sense with this.

But That goes on through the early 1900s, and there's other products that use it too.

But the interesting thing is it is clearly a marketing tool to sell the products.

It's not necessarily about this is going to be some collector's item and you are buying it for that.

It's just a little bit of a marketing tool to try and sell a product.

Like cigarettes, there's McRobinson's chocolates was another one, Black Crow licorice.

And then later on, mobile.

This is

probably the most accessible

early

memory.

Yeah.