WBA and Wolves cards for sale
Some of the world's oldest cigarette cards featuring Wolves and West Brom footballers will go under the hammer - just days after the current players meet on the pitch for Sunday's big derby.
The rare 'Taddys' were today described as the "penny blacks of football cigarette cards" and are expected to fetch up to £475 in a London auction room.
Former stars of the two teams from almost a century ago are featured on 24 cigarette cards from 1907 that were originally given away free inside packets of Taddy's cigarettes.
They include head and shoulder images of the players in oval frames - 13 Wolves and eleven Albion - and would be worth even more if they were complete sets of 15 for each club.
Among them are Wolves' centre-forward George Hedley, who helped them win the FA Cup in 1908 and later ran a boarding house in Wolverhampton; and West Bromwich Albion's H Pearson, who is seen wearing a flat cap.
They were produced 19 years after Wolves became a founder member of the Football League in 1888, and the year before they won the FA Cup.
It was also just seven years after West Bromwich Albion moved from their old Stoney Lane ground into their gleaming new state-of-the-art stadium The Hawthorns, where the side will be hoping for a win against arch rivals Wolves on Sunday.
Auctioneer Graham Budd, who will be selling the cards at Sotheby's Olympia on November 1, said said. "These really are the Penny Blacks of football cigarette cards."
