Summary

Scanlen's VFL (Victorian Football League) football card, 1967, featuring Bernie Massey, full back for Melbourne Football Club. Sold with bubble gum.

By the 1960s, Scanlen's Sweets became the principal supplier of VFL/AFL football trade cards, producing one set per year from 1963 to 1991.

Physical Description

Football card featuring photo of player with a football within a television graphic. 'Scanlen's Sweets' runs down left hand side and 'Bernie Massey, Full Back Melbourne' along the bottom. Card is series numbered '60'. Reverse of card has section of a black and white image of a football game, suggesting that the whole set pieces together the entire image.

Significance

Scanlen's football cards could be purchased from almost every local milk bar. Pack prices, which included bubble gum, were inexpensive enough to buy a few at a time depending on a kid's pocket-money. There were about 5 cards in a pack, and the school yard and neighbourhood street ritual was to collect and trade cards with friends in order to try to complete a full set from one or each team. Footy cards were an intrinsic part of youthful football fan activity.

By the 1960s, Scanlens became the principal supplier of VFL/AFL football trade cards, producing one set per year from 1963 to 1991 (companies such as Mobil, and bread companies such as Tip Top and Sunicrust also produced cards around this time). Football cigarette cards and football trade cards were produced by various companies prior to the 1960s, including BVD, Sniders, and G Phillips (cigarette companies) and Coles, Argus, Hoadleys and Kornies. The cigarette cards were in production from as early as the late 19th century, with the hey-day for cigarette cards featuring footballers occurring from 1900 to 1917. The larger format cards grew in popularity around the 1930s-1950s.

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