A&BC Chewing Gum Ltd. – a brief history – part 3

Part 3 – Football cards, Topps and the Beatles

The concept of producing football cards at A&BC came from Douglas Coakley. A&BC Gum began with an ‘All Sports’ series in 1954, a set of 120 cards which included 36 footballers. They followed this in 1958 with a set of 92 footballer cards, and thus began a run of 16 years of football card production. During this 16 year period A&BC produced both English and Scottish sets, and included special issues and giveaways with many cards e.g. paper pennants, small black and white photographs etc. For a list of all English A&BC football cards produced between 1965/66 and 1979/80 click here.

A footballer set was produced every year in their thousands and therefore became the mainstay of A&BC. Douglas Coakley was responsible for the design of the cards, plus signing up the teams and individual footballers. He appointed a sports agent who went around to training grounds locating and signing up the individual players on contracts. The agent also wrote the text for each card.

In later years A&BC introduced the concept of ‘series’ within a set. Series 1 would be produced to coincide with the start of a football season i.e. for distribution around August each year. A second series would be introduced some months later and, if required, a third series would also be produced. The concept aimed to keep the series fresh for their agents, allowing the ‘selling season’ to be kept alive alongside the football playing season. Obviously the number of cards produced in each series was reduced in anticipation of lower sales of the later series. Series 3 cards of most sets are therefore the harder to collect, and are now more valuable.

Following the success of the English football cards A&BC began producing Scottish versions of their cards in the early 1960s. These were also popular, though produced in smaller numbers than the English cards. The backs of the Scottish cards were, after a while, coloured differently from the English sets to avoid mix-ups between the two in the factory.

Douglas Coakley recalls some interesting stories of footballers:

• – In the 1960s each footballer was paid a set fee of £10 for the rights to use their image on an A&BC card. This was irrespective of their ‘fame’.

• – George Best was the first player to use an agent who refused the £10 fee and instead asked for £1,000. A&BC refused. George Best appears in the 1966/67, 1967/68 and 1968/69 sets, but not any A&BC sets after that date, perhaps dating this incident to that time.

• – Tommy Smith, the Liverpool captain, didn’t want to sign for £10, believing the amount too small. The agent contacted Douglas who then telephoned Tommy Smith and explained to him that A&BC paid everyone £10 regardless of their stature in the game. This included many of the ‘lesser’ players featured in A&BC cards, and £10 would be a lot of money to them. After that explanation Tommy Smith agreed to sign.

• – In the late 60s A&BC commissioned some tin badges of football players as give-aways at trade fairs. These badges are now highly sought after and collectable.