The Flipping Card Game

The Flipping Card Game

The cards I am talking about are those that were found in the packs of cigarettes and other commercial items bought just after the second world war. I never had any but Mike in his various boxes of stuff has a pile of lovely cigarette cards . They are all different kinds showing pictures of birds and butterflies, trains , cars , important people etc.

 When I asked him how come he had so many he said it was a favorite game but not really a trading or swopping game, it was a game of skill where you won more cards and that's how he has so many. The game was played by leaning a set of cards against a wall , ( I guess the ones you had too many of or didn't want to make up a set) Then other kids would flip their extra cards at yours and if they knocked them down and covered the card, they would keep your cards but if the card stayed standing you would keep their cards. Pretty simple. It seems it was a very popular game.

Whether the original educational idea of reading the information on the back of the cards ever came into it I don't know. Maybe that was how the cards were advertised to sell the cigarettes .Obviously it was a time when a lot of people smoked and this card collecting became very popular.

Forward to the 70s and I remember my boys collecting hockey cards and had stacks of them at one time. I vaguely remember them being bought in small packs so they must have been either sold or given away with candies or something else. I don''t remember my boys ever playing the flipping card game but I do remember they collected certain ones which led to a lot of trading. As they got older the cards were forgotten like a lot of other things, I used to give the old cards out to my students when I was teaching as a bonus for a good work. I guess looking back I should have kept some of the cards, they may have been worth a fortune these days.