Two similar Baines-like cards... both portraying Hunslet superstar "Ahr" Albert Goldthorpe... (full bio here on Goldthorpe family website)
The left card advertises for Pears Soap, while the right card advertises for St Jacobs Oil, a sports liniment recommended - in bold letters... - by the trainer of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC...
At first, I was thinking that these cards were aiming to compete with "genuine" Baines Cards in school yards... before realizing that these cards were also printed by J.Baines of Manningham... This gentleman must have been a business genius... inventing (maybe ?) and industrialising (for sure... as soon as 1887) a product (the sport collecting cards for kids), defining marketing strategies playing on collectors' addiction (the more you collect, the better reward you can claim) or collectors' inexhaustible thirst for new pictures (more than 1000 known designs) , attracting advertisers to leverage on the popularity of his Baines cards... and possibly somehow megalomaniac, as he regularly portrayed himself on his cards instead of famous sportsmen...
PS : Here is an ongoing project for serious geeks... I once created a Google Map to locate all my Baines cards (94 cards now)... and fellow collectors' cards as well... I will update it from time to time... but feel free to add yours..
View Baines Cards in a larger map
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