No More Cigarette Package ‘Faggies’?

Mark up one more victim for the current COVID-19 crisis: garage sales.

For weeks we’ve enjoyed glorious spring weather, sunny and warm, in the Cowichan Valley. Any other year, this would be prime garage sale season as people housecleaned and attacked the miscellaneous disposables cluttering up their garage or carport.

But not so this year with its health-mandated social distancing and I, for one, will have to content myself with fond memories of glories past. Mind you, with all the treasures I’ve gathered over the years, I hardly need to find more. Not that rationality enters the picture when it comes to collecting. The collecting bug, although not to be compared with a lethal virus, is a lifetime curse or blessing. Once bitten, you’re hooked.

I’ve had the bug since I was a child.

That’s when I found an 1897 American Indian head penny while walking to Christie’s store, in Saanich where I lived. Then a worn 1917 large Canadian penny in the neighbouring Rabey’s driveway. I say large because, until, 1920, Canadian one-cent coins were the size of a quarter, taking their cue from our British heritage until the Royal Canadian Mint decided to conform with the American cent, beginning in 1921.

So began my coin collecting, a hobby I pursued with enthusiasm into my high teens. My friend Dave and I would take the bus to town each Saturday and make the rounds of banks, buying rolls of pennies, nickels and dimes (our limit—quarters and anything above were too pricey) then sit on a bench and sort through them looking for older coins. King George V and VI were yet in circulation; we weren’t interested in Queen Elizabeth, she was too new.

And there were highly prized rarities to be on the lookout for.

Like the 1936 dot, the 1947 maple leaf, the lower circulation 1948s, the bronze Tombac nickel and the zinc American cent (both ersatz products of the Second World War and collectible if not valuable). 1921 was the rarest year for all denominations of both copper and silver Canadian coins, but good luck finding them.

The best part was filling the album-like folders with their punched holes for inserting and displaying your coins in chronological order. The gaps acted as an incentive to completing each album.

Then came the inevitable spoilers. In the early 1960s the price of silver soared and dealers, not collectors, bought up pre-1964 silver coins at a slight premium, just to melt them down as bullion. How many collectible coins vanished into the melting pots, no one will ever know.

Until then, I’d thoroughly enjoyed collecting Canadian and American coins. Then our home was broken into and most of my prized stash stolen. I placed what was left in a safety deposit box but there was no joy in having to make an appointment with my bank to see my coin collection. So I sold what was left for a modest profit and moved on.

Long before this, about age nine, I’d begun collecting Royal Canadian Navy memorabilia thanks to my father. He’d retired from the navy after 20 years as a chief petty officer. When I showed an interest in bits of his uniform and wartime souvenirs he gave them to me, child though I was. Fortunately, our coin-stealing burglar had no interest in RCN artifacts and I have them still.

My course as a collector was set although I didn’t realize it at the time.

It wasn’t until my early 20s, however, that, through my writing historical articles in the Victoria Colonist, I came to know George and Madelaine Larrigan. Madelaine called one day about an article I’d written and ended up inviting me to their Oak Bay home.

It was almost like walking into an antique store, they had so many fine collectibles, many of them handed down through George’s family, the pioneering Wards. But many others had been gathered up by Madelaine who was an avid collector of fine furnishings and chinaware and such.

Now, I’d already visited some antique and secondhand stores on my own but, limited in budget, there wasn’t much of interest to me that I could afford. Dad’s RCN stuff had been free and collecting coins had really been, literally, a nickel-and-dime pursuit—even I could afford that.

It was Madelaine Larrigan who introduced me to collecting, even—particularly—on a limited budget.

She told me about desirables such as Depression Glass, Carnival Glass, figural candy containers, kerosene lanterns and a host of other formerly everyday items that had become collectible. This was in the mid- and latter 1960s when antique collecting had become almost viral thanks to the many old mansions being torn down to make way for apartments, and the Tilikum Outdoor Theatre which served as a popular flea market on Sundays.

By then my mother and father were in the act, particularly my mother, who set her eye on Carnival Glass, old prints of women and children, and china shoes. (My father ended up specializing in figural whisky decanters.) Best of all, Madelaine introduced us to Nye Granlin and, later, her sister, Kay Herold. Nye, who had a small secondhand store for a time, was considered to be the best “picker” in town. By answering ads for garage sales she came up with a seemingly endless array of collectible treasures.

Nye also was known for her fair dealing.

She bought low (without haggling) and sold low, with a minimal markup. Nothing stayed with her for long, a small coterie of collectors, myself and my parents included, eagerly awaiting a chance to relieve her of her latest haul. And so it went until our house was a-crawl with antiques and lesser-status collectibles although we shunned anything we thought to be kitsch.

Which, finally, brings me to the subject of this post, cigarette ‘faggies.’ Other than playing at it as a child, I’ve never been a cigarette smoker. And the closest I came to identifying cigarettes with collecting was the backs of Sportsman cigarette packages. This was an attractive series of fishing flies; upon completing the set you sent away to the company for an album in which to mount them.

In short, these were among if not the last of the “faggies,” a once highly popular collectible that all but died out during the Second World War. Smoking, of course, got its pernicious start in England thanks to Sir Walter Raleigh and the like. But faggies, as the cards became known, were first inserted into cigarette packages to strengthen the packages by American tobacco sellers, in the 1870s. British cigarette manufacturers picked up on what had become a popular fad towards the turn of the last century, producing themes in, usually, sets of 50. Everything from star athletes to flowers to uniforms to naval ships to actresses of the day.

Ogden’s published the first in colour, of footballers.

John Player & Sons, which identified itself as a branch of the Imperial Tobacco Co., makers of the ubiquitous Players cigarettes, recognized the advertising potential and published albums in which to save your faggies. The single completed album of 50 in my esoteric museum is entitled Military Uniforms of the British Empire Overseas.

Because of the randomness of the distribution, even heavy smokers would have been challenged to complete a set; this is where trading would have entered the picture. Someone went to a lot of trouble to collect all 50 of these these mini postcards and mount them—perfectly, I should point out—in what’s now my album, which they would have had to send away for. Each card is accompanied by a brief description of the military regiment therein, including the para-military Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Alas, faggies became another victim of the Second World War because of a shortage of printing paper. There’s no publication date on mine but it’s likely from the 1930s and is, I’m happy to say, in almost pristine condition. I found this particular treasure in an antique store in Duncan’s famous Whippletree Junction in the 1970s. I’ve thinned out many of my collectibles over the years but this one remains a keeper even though it doesn’t really fit with any of my other collections.

I can’t say much if anything in favour of smoking cigarettes but I do respect faggies.

In fact, I’d really like to have an album of Sportsman fishing flies because I identity that with my childhood. Without ever smoking Sportsman cigarettes I did try to collect their package art but never managed to complete the set and send away for an album, dang it.

PS: I haven’t seen (other than my own) or heard of faggies for years but tobacco tins and advertising items are hot collectors’ items. Most of the fathers of my time used the round tins for keeping nails and other bits of hardware, an early and inadvertent form of recycling. More popular with kids and women (who kept buttons and small collectibles in them) were the “flats,” shallow tins about six inches square and nicely decorated with the manufacturers’ advertising artwork.

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