Aviation Cigarette Cards Of The 1930's

Cigarette Cards originated in the USA in the 1870s. They were issued by most British Tobacco companies until World War II . They are now very much sought after by collectors. The cards portrayed on these pages were all issued during the 1930's.

This was a particularly interesting period in aviation history. Design was in transition from the biplane design to the more efficient monoplane configuration. Aircraft such as the Lockheed Electra and the De Havilland Albatross achieving record speeds of a little over 200 m.p.h., representing a performance increase of one hundred percent or more over that achieved by most of biplane designs then still in production and service.

Many of the aircraft illustrated went on to become vital assets during World War II. One Aircraft the Douglas Dakota (C47) is still performing useful service today, to date no other aircraft built can match it for such long lived service.

The cards portrayed include sets from Gallaher Ltd, John Player and Sons and WD & HO Wills.

In order to make navigation as simple as possible the images are split into categories either representing the maker or the country of manufacture. All the images are shown as "thumbnails" together with the name of each aircraft. Clicking on any "thumbnail" image will open a large image together with the description of each aircraft exactly as described on the reverse of each card.

Click on any page logo situated at the top right of each page to return to this page.