W.D. & H.O. Wills were a British tobacco company founded in Bristol in 1786 by Henry Wills. His sons, William Day and Henry Overton ran the company following his death in the 1820s.

n 1887, Wills became the first company to issue cards in their cigarette packets, although these were actually advertisments for their other products printed on the pack 'stiffener'. The stiffeners were an extra piece of card placed in the pack to help protect the cigarettes. When it been clear that people were collecting the different advertisment cards, they followed the lead of Ogdens and issued a set of 25 cards featuring ships in 1895.

In 1896 they produced a set of 50 cricketers - the first to feature sportsmen, and in 1902 they produced a set of 66 football cards. The players were featured in their Sunday best suits or in their team shirts.

As the collecting of cards took off between the wars, the different companies produced better and better quality cards. The 1935 and 1939 sets of Association Footballers featured colour portrait paintings of 50 footballers, and are as good a record of the kits and players as any photo from the time.

Sets were produced until the Second World War, after which paper shortages meant that a lot of the companies that survived simply stopped producing cards.