Yes, I’ve been doing cards again. I’ve done Star Trek, The Beatles and yet more A&BC football cards (the orange and red backs from 1972-3). Thanks to an informative website I’m now in possession of much more knowledge than I really need on this subject.
I think my brain may be grinding to a halt, but I think I’ve isolated the point when the rot set into football. The 1970 set shows footballers with serviceable haircuts and quite a few broken noses. The 1972-3 set shows straighter noses and shocking haircuts. That three year window was the thin end of the wedge, and look where we ended up – diving, spray foam and perms.
Look at that haircut…
…and that moustache.
I grew my first moustache in 1975. It wasn’t a success. In truth they rarely are. Some things from the past should be left there – moustaches, I feel, are one of those things. As are rickets, platform soles and The King’s Evil.
For those of you interested in why one photo is upside down I have to confess that I don’t know. I struggled with a glitchy internet last night and had problems with a lot of photographs being upside down on the photo card. Eventually I just used two that seemed to be cooperative.
This morning I found that the post hadn’t actually loaded and one of the photos was upside down again.
So I gave up and loaded the post again with extra lines to explain the upside down photograph.
For those of you more arty types it’s an ironic take on the topsy-turvey nature of modern sport.
For the others, it’s what happens when you hand modern technology to a man who is barely past the crayon stage of artistic evolution.
I learned something new here. “The King’s Evil” is a new one to me. Amazing what was done back then. They will say that about our period in history in the future. 🙂
Yes, my kids listen in wonder about my tales of childhood without a mobile phone…
It is a rare moment if you see a picture of a modern footballer in the popular press who is not in the process of committing a foul. They don’t seem to able to keep their hands off each other.
It’s the attempts to hoodwink the referee that really annoy me, though I don’t pay much attention to it these days.
I found a bunch of Monkees cards which probably have no value, but way back when I did like them. They may have been more popular in the US, despite Davey Jones.
They used to make quite large moviestar/singer cards, something like 4×6 or 5×7 inches, black and white, and we’d get them in the 1960s and 70s from machines in arcades. They may have cost 2 cents a chance, and we kept going in hopes of getting a Beatle or someone we knew and thought was cute–
They were popular here too, because of the TV programme as much as anything.
http://www.goldminemag.com/articles/monkees-trading-cards-show-their-worth
Thanks for the link. I don’t think i have whole sets, but have some that I put into a little jewlery box, so they are in good shape. The little flick books sound familiar too–and I have never even heard of Rolling Stones cards. They were not my type of band really, although I loved the Keith Richards autobiography (written with someone very entertaining). It cracked me up when Bowie was so very sly and witty in contrast to Mick’s ridiculous self-importance in the video Dancing In The Street–
Growing up it was Beatles all the way for me, until they started turning hippy. I was only about 10 and couldn’t handle the mysticism. 🙂
I’m a few years younger than you–half a dozen maybe–and they didn’t register on my radar until I got a radio for Christmas 1972 or 73, and by then they’d come and gone and all we heard was their whole pop/AM catalogue–I like the raga-inflected stuff, but not the headtrip-confusing stuff as much.
Sometimes I’m glad to be the age I am. Six years younger and I would have missed so much stuff… 🙂
It’s true. Even six years younger than I would have missed much of disco, what became classic rock, and my beloved New Wave circa 1982 or so–
I managed to pull that in too. 🙂
🙂 Did you ever play that game with cigarette cards where you took it in turns to flick them against a wall and kept the others that yours landed on?
Yes. It’s both excellent fun and a very good way to reduce them to an uncollectable condition by rounding off the corners. 🙂
Absolutely
That upside down photo throws a little pizzazz into the mix. 😉
Pizzazz and ineptitude in one photo. 🙂
I’d say it was the arrival of Spanish footballers that marks the advent of diving. They don’t all do it, but to me, it seems a bigger proportion than many other nationalities.
That seems to be an accurate summing up. 🙂