Newsletter: Aug 1999

Allow me to extend a warm welcome to the August addition of the Franklyn Newsletter. Again a healthy number of new faces reading this month.

July is over and will not be returning for another 12 months but it will only seem like three the speed things move nowadays. The special effects in films like The Matrix are slowly catching up with my experience of time and perhaps the plot is beginning to catch up with your concept of me. Fear not though I do have an all to real physical existence.

Anyway thirty years have got between now and the moon landings; a period of time which enabled the BBC to wipe the tape they had stored man's greatest technological triumph on which makes my odd email loss seem pretty minor.

It was all done with computers rather less sophisticated than the average calculator today and so whilst pundits were asking why had man not colonized the moon yet (I suggest we try making large parts of this planet habitable first) I played Railroad Tycoon II on computing power NASA could only dream off 30 years ago.

Sometimes things just do not work out quite as you expected, the trick is making the most of where you are at this moment.

The shrewd reader will have guessed I have grown another year older since I wrote the last newsletter hence all this babble about time, significance and making the most of it all despite not being quite where I thought I would be. This has a lot to do with the fact I had not a clue where I was going to be when younger but major cigarette card dealer was well beyond my imaginations. Count me as a really lucky fellow, a hobby and passion as a job, you can equal it but you can't beat it.

So despite it being the month of my birth and therefore a really good month to indulge in introspective depression what else have I done. Well get along to the website and find out once you've read this. A hint though, if you like dogs there is a large expansion of dog images available. It seems some people need to see more than one image to make a purchase decision. Well that is fair enough and never let me stand in the way of a person and a purchase decision.

Anyone that remembers the gallery section of the site will recognize the idea only this is a better one. Thanks to Keith for asking me where that had gone, it reminded me to bring it back. In fact the new section is a little over 1.3MB in total (split up over a dozen or so new pages and over 100 new images mind) and as such represents the largest focused section of the site.

It is fairly obvious how I am going to be expanding that area of the site in future updates. Film Soccer and Cricket gallery sections will be coming on stream. Soccer was going to be done in time for the beginning of the season but the earliest season start ever caught me rather off guard. Seems only a month or so ago Man Utd were kicking the inflated bladder about with such good effect (and still are if you have been following the latest Cabinet reshuffle).

Amusing tricks and how to do them appears on the website, the main character is a middle aged balding bloke with a smug look on his face quite why I feel such an affinity with the fellow I couldn't tell you.

Auction:

This month I have introduced a new system whereby people will be emailed with an automatic message if their bids are no longer the winning bid. Should make it better. However the fact you do not get that email does not mean necessarily you have made the winning bid because of the large influx of bids in the final day or so.

One more thing the user-interface has changed again this month. I am hoping it will make life easier. I have been experimenting with a java enabled collapsible tree menu design, you'll have seen them before and I think it makes things easier rather than more difficult. For the less jargon-aware, I've altered the front page. However there is an option to go back to the old style menu bar. Fear not though I think the front page should download at least as fast as it used to do. The front page was going to have a bigger overhaul but lets let these new things settle. Next month I promise to make the links page more useful so now is the time to send in your link requests. Indeed if there is a site you think I should link to then give me the details and I will see if they want to link. A number of sites do not what to link to Franklyn Cards for a variety of reasons I will leave to your imagination.

The close up section of the site is now better integrated so if you have been annoyed with those horizontal scroll bars then for the vast majority of you these should now be a thing of the past. So give that area of the site another squint as well as the new page on aircraft that has been added to it.

The site is quite big now, not thousands of pages but a good few hundred and growing fast and it is ever a challenge to ensure you can shuffle between the pages you want to in as few link clicks as possible. This new design should much reduce the amount of clicking you have to do so you can spend more time using the site than waiting for intermediate pages to load. One thing is certain it will not be the last time I fiddle about with the front page so let me know if it is better or how I can make it better.

There is other stuff as well but it is all on the website.

Changing pace, I really did ask for it in the July Newsletter when I suggested it was a quieter period of the year so now was as good a time as any to get in those questions you may not ordinarily bother me with. Thanks for the great response to that and I was glad to help a number of people who clearly had spent a long time wondering about a few things. Although July and August are probably the best times for such things no time is a bad time so keep the questions coming in. So if for some reason you failed to take up the gauntlet thrown down in July please do in August.

More and more the website is being taken as the definitive source on cigarette cards which is nice of course but may I point out it is far from complete or comprehensive (those that know this can stop chuckling now). If you cannot find what you are looking for on the site it is probably because it is not there rather than I have hidden it in some dark corner waiting to be discovered. So rather than wasting time looking for it just fire off an email and I can sort it out. If it is on the site I can tell you where it is (and try to make sure it is easier to find next time) and if enough people ask me about something rest assured I will be writing all about it as fast as possible.

The other thought is; if it is not on the site it is because I have not heard of it or cannot supply it. The odds of me having not heard of it are pretty slim and I can usually make some sort of effort or at least point you in the direction of someone that does know what they are talking about. If it is a UK cigarette / trade card the chances of me being able to supply it are very good. Month after month I supply people with cards that sometimes they have searched years to find.

Okay enough of me advertising for yet more email. You must remember unlike a lot of cigarette card sites or 'dealers' this is my business. I get up in the morning answer the emails which have come in over night and am effectively glued to this keyboard answering email and thinking up pages for the website until I fall asleep. It is not just my job it is my life, if there is a better one nobody has proved it to me.

Ringing the changes.

25 odd years ago there was a headline in a local newspaper which announced 'Ogdens to quit Bristol.' Bristol was one of the home ports of the tobacco industry in the UK. The thing it had in common with the two other great tobacco ports, Glasgow and Liverpool was the proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and therefore America, more properly Virginia.

Anyway things change and the old order gives way to the new. Sometimes it seems a shame that old names have to die out a bit like famous families (and so often that is exactly what the tobacco companies were) just falling into disrepair.

What was interesting that in 1974 the factory, in Redcliff Street, which was closing down was known by the locals as 'Ringers'. This being a none-to-subtle reminder of the days when Edwards Ringer & Bigg owned the site.

William Ringer set up shop at 22 High Street in 1813 and it was to be some 30 years later that WH Edwards came onboard to create Edwards, Ringer & Co and moved to the Redcliff Street site.

The name we all tend to know now was completed some 8 years later when WD Bigg & Co threw their lot in to establish, Edwards Ringer & Bigg.

Also in Bristol was the huge concern of WD & HO Wills, begun in 1786 some 7 years after another Bristol based firm, Franklyn Davey & Co.

These businesses were going to cross paths because of the tobacco wars instigated by James Duke when he landed in Liverpool and bought Ogdens. The UK manufacturers responding by creating the giant I.T.C (more details on the tobacco war is on the website).

Obviously the combining of this much of the UK tobacco industry meant there was a certain amount of rationalisation available. After the war Ringers took over the manufacturing side of Franklyn Davey. In 1957 Ringers took over the entire Franklyn Davey operation.

In 1961 there was a big shake-up of the ITC operation and Churchman, Lambert & Ringer appeared. This saw the closure of Lambert & Butlers London operation and the centralisation of cigar production at the Churchman building in Ipswich

Ringers and Lambert were not to survive long as even the name was shortened to Churchmans very quickly as the original name served no real purpose.

. The name Ringers clung on for a few more years as part of a brand name for some hand rolling tobacco but even that was dropped eventually.

Churchmans had been taken over by Ogdens in 1973.

If you have an interest in some of the history of smaller manufacturers there are various pages on the website. They can be found on the full index under the card pioneers heading.

Offers:

Last months astronomical offer caught the imagination and although I could run the same thing again because of the excitement caused by the solar eclipse going over Europe but that would be a bit feeble.

As I have a sneaky regard for Churchmans cards (actually not so sneaky for those that have read bits of the website) I think it is time to offer up some of these great cards. Subject to availability all Churchman sets will be sold at **% (number only disclosed to newsletter subscribers) of catalogue price for the merry month of August 1999.

Check out the various Churchman pages dotted about the site and also the price guide sections which has price details of many of the Churchman series.

I hope to hear from you this month. The September update will be going out on the fifth of September.