P.A. Adolph "Famous Footballers" (1954) - series 1
Fronts Backs By Card Teams Details

Famous Footballers

 

Year of issue: 1954

Teams represented in this collection:

Arsenal	Aston Villa	Barnsley	Birmingham City	Blackburn Rovers
Bolton Wanderers	Brentford	Bury	Chelsea	Derby County
Everton	Fulham	Grimsby Town	Huddersfield Town	Liverpool
Manchester City	Manchester United	Middlesbrough	Newcastle United	Port Vale
Portsmouth	Sheffield Wednesday	Stockport County	Sunderland	Tottenham Hotspur
West Bromwich Albion	West Ham United	Wolverhampton Wanderers

Overview

This is a fairly common set made up of two series of 24 cards given away with boxes of Subbuteo accessories in 1954. A further set of 50 cards made up of the first two sets plus another 2 cards was also issued. This subsequent set is very rare with the cards being slightly bigger than the originals and on photographic paper rather than card. The original set has 'A series of 24' on the back, the second series has 'Second series of 24' on the back, and the third set simply 'A series of 50'

Each card features a black and white photo of the player in action, either in a game or in training. Most are obviously posed with some used in other sets featuring the player. The pictures are all in the portrait format apart from number 23, which is a landscape shot of Plymouth's Bill Shortt diving for the ball.

39 teams have a player featured across the two sets, with some having a couple of players. Most of the immediate post-war big names feature, including some who had dropped down the leagues, such as Tommy Lawton at Brentford and Peter Doherty at Doncaster.

The back of each card is a composite of a template frame featuring the name and address of the company and set, and then the player's name, team and card number slotted in.

Cards from both sets of 24 sell for around 99p each, depending on their condition. Full sets sell for £15 - £25. Cards from the rare third set of 50 can fetch up to £25 on their own.

Example of the three sets:

Front of card in 1-24 range		Back of card in 1-24 range
Front of card in 25-48 range		Back of card in 25-48 range
Front of card in third series (copied from the excellent Brentford Memorabilia site)		Back of card in third series

Cards of interest:

Jackie Stamps is a cult hero at Derby having scored 2 goals in Derby's 1946 FA Cup final win, but didn't feature on many cards, partly because of the drop in the number of card sets produced due to paper shortages immediately after the war. Jackie was so well respected at Derby that the annual Player of the Year award was named in his honour. He continued attending Derby games right up to his death in 1991, despite being blind for the last 20 years of his life.         The photos used in this set were subsequently used in other sets as well. Some more creatively than others.