Association football card
[4] However, the earliest cigarette association football cards from a known set are Billy Bassett and Charlie Athersmith from Godfrey and Phillips “General Interest” in 1896.
Other cards manufacturers were Churchman's cigarettes, that in 1914 launched an illustrated series featuring action pictures with individual portraits as inserts, and Godfrey Phillips Ltd. (a tobacco company from India, a British colony by then) and Lacey's.
[6] Argentina is probably the oldest producer of football cards in South America, when local tobacco company "Cigarrillos Monterrey" released a series about Primera División teams.
In 1926, another cigarettes brand, "Cigarrillos Plus Ultra", released a set of cards featuring photos of teams and players.
In 1930, Player's brought photograph to cards again with the series "Cup Winners", that homaged FA Cup winners teams of the past, although other companies continued printing illustrated cards in their new collections, such as Lambert & Butler (1931) and Carreras (1934, 1936), Godfrey Phillips (1934, 1936), Ardath (1934), W.D.
& H. O. Wills (1935, 1939), Ogden's (two collections in 1935, the first featuring players of both sports, association football and rugby league, all illustrated by Machin).
[6] The outbreak of the Second World War caused a severe shortage of paper, and tobacco companies were forced to bring an end to the production of cigarette cards.
[6] In the 1940s Argentine manufacturers introduced smaller, circular-shaped cards, such as "Figuritas Bicicleta" in 1949 that featured photos of footballers and illustrations of clubs' badges.
Other companies that produced circular cards were "Starosta", "Lali" and "Sport" and "Gran Crack" in the 1950s, followed by "Deportito", "Fulbito", "Golazo" and "Campeón" in the 1960s.
[18][19] In the United States, Upper Deck (established in 1988), released a series for the 1994 World Cup featuring several sports personalities that promoted the competition.
In the United Kingdom trading cards had been popular for many years but really boomed after England's 1966 World Cup victory.
[22] Asian manufacturers include Futera, a United Arab Emirates company established in 1989 that got licenses of some of the most notable English clubs.
[23] In May 2006, Panini partnered with The Coca-Cola Company and Tokenzone to produce the first virtual sticker album for the 2006 World Cup.
The album was viewable in at least 10 different languages, such as Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.
