Dear Mr. Barker - E.C.Wharton-Tigar 1962 and on.....
 

Borrowed from the Britishmuseum.org here is a short bio of EC Wharton-Tigar. Then there are some of his writings never previously seen. These first ones are to Buck Barker....enjoy


E C Wharton-Tigar (collector; British; Male; 1912 - 1995)

Bibliography

'Burning Bright, the autobiography of Edward Wharton-Tigar', with A.J.Wilson, London 1987

Biography

Mining engineer, SOE operative, director of the Selection Trust, and collector of trade cards, especially cigarette cards. Began collecting in 1920, and by his death had formed the world's greatest collection which he bequeathed to the BM. It is registered as a group under 2006,0201.1. He was the founder in 1938, and president of the Cartophilic Society of Great Britain, and his index system and the cards in his collection form the basis for the 'World Index of Tobacco Cards' in many printed volumes.



http://luckeycards.com/tigar31oct1962a.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar31oct1962b.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar31oct1962c.jpg


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Very fine Leon!

Thanks for sharing! Extremely interesting to say the least.

Craig

WOW ! Thanks for sharing that.

Love the references to John D. Wagner and Jeff Burdick. Thanks for sharing!

Great stuff Leon!

Awesome to see our history!!

Glad ya'll liked it. Here is one more for now....

http://luckeycards.com/tigar29oct1963a001.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar29oct1963b.jpg

Leon, just love this stuff thanks for sharing.

Leon,

Thanks for sharing. Your collection is like a museum. Every time you post something, it's a rarity I've never seen.

You should set this stuff up at the National for display only, so that we can all come over and drool on it.

Good stuff!
Thanks for posting them

Would have love to seen the listings Tigar mentions concerning the t205s and t205 silks!

Joshua

Very neat letters, fantastic glimpse into the early days of cataloguing the monstrous N172 set.

so the journey goes...


http://luckeycards.com/tigar18nov1963a.jpg

http://luckeycards.com/tigar8jan1964a.jpg

http://luckeycards.com/tigar27jan1964a.jpg

Very cool. Thanks for sharing, Leon.

Great letters Leon-quite fascinating. I googled his address, it was in a tony part of London as one would expect: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=22+ca...gl=us&t=h&z=12

Thanks, Leon... the hobby history is great!
 

Leon... Thanks VERY much for posting these great letters from one of our hobby's all-time greats to another ATG. (No doubt you may well rank among them as the years roll by.) Also, thanks to Dave H. for the link to the late Mr. Wharton-Tigar's residence. Before seeing Dave's post, I had noted the address with a plan to see what the internet might provide. As much fun as our collectibles provide, these minutes from our hobby's rich past make for a real treat! Thanks again for sharing them with us.

Fascinating insight into how this was done before computers, email and scans. We have it so much easier!

Thanks for posting these letters Leon, awesome glimpse into the past! Very dedicated hobby pioneers. Amazing!

Sincerely, Clayton

Here are a few more...one was previously shown but fits into the subject matter and I want this to be complete of what there is in the small collection. After all is said and done we will put it over in the archive section.


http://luckeycards.com/tigar14april1964.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar14april1964b.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar25sept1964.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar1feb1965.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar1feblist1965a.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar1feblist1965b.jpg

Thank you Leon for sharing with the Forum!

Attachment 94164Attachment 94165

Thanks for posting the hobby historical correspondences, Leon. It's always fun to read how they did this back in the day. I've posted this card before, but this is one of my favorite cards from a Lew Lipset ebay auction years ago. I'm surprised more Barker n172's don't surface, or maybe he did not stamp many that he once had in his collection.

THis is great stuff! Thank you for sharing Leon!
JimB

I've seen Burdick's collection of Old Judges at the Met on a few occasions, and it is quite impressive. There are well over 1000 poses, maybe closer to 1500, including one of the four known Ansons in Uniform. It would be fun to see them again, with the benefit of the Old Judge book as a reference.

Here is one of the lists (the cover of the book) EC Wharton Tigar mentioned. It is a large with about 80ish legal size pages of lists in it. Also, some more letters from him to Buck...


http://luckeycards.com/tigarcartophilic12list.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar17feb1969a.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar31oct1977a.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar31oct1977b.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar31oct1977c.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar31oct1977d.jpg

Now something for T210 and T211 collectors. Enjoy...(larger scans on purpose)

http://luckeycards.com/tigar28dec1970sa.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar28dec1970sb.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar28dec1970sc.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar19july1978a.jpg

Here are a couple more odds and ends. There are some xerox'd sheets of N172 cards, and a few other miscellaneous things, but this was most of the Tigar things. Happy collecting!!

http://luckeycards.com/tigar1970swantlista.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar1970swantlistb.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar26august1973a.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar26august1973b.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/tigar26august1973c.jpg

Fascinating early work on cataloguing OJs. Remind us Leon how you came to own all these correspondences. Thx!

"Anson, Portrait Arms Folded'
Nice...

There are players missing from the Old Judge want list, such as Flynn and Gibson, that may have been unknown at that time.

Thanks for bringing these items to the boards attention.

I have sent an email to the British Museum this morning to see if the baseball cards from the Wharton-Tigar collection are available to view via public access or whether you have to request a private viewing. Hopefully, I will be able to visit either next weekend or weekend of 4th-5th May.

If anyone has anything specific they would like me to look for please let me know.

Martin

Was searching for some Old Judge stuff and found this thread from some years back. It's amazing what is on the board after 16 yrs of discussions...Figure at least a few members haven't seen it.

Thanks, Leon. I hadn't seen this. It's a good complement to the Card Collector's Bulletin articles I've been posting about Old Judges and T210s.

Also, I have a pretty good run of The Cartophilic World from 1954 to 1963, though not complete. I know Buck Barker wrote some articles for it in the 50s about U.S. cards, and Wharton-Tigar also reprinted some articles from Card Collector's Bulletin around the time of the publication of the 1960 American Card Catalog. I'll look tonight and see if I can find any of the articles Wharton-Tigar mentioned in his 1962-63 letters to Barker.

John England spoke often of Mr. Wharton-Tigar, I believe John was a contributor on some of the indexes.

In 1985, not knowing any better I wrote to him asking some questions about British tennis and soccer issues. He responded with a nice note, some example cards and sent me current catalogs from both Murray's and The London Cigarette Card Company. A very generous man and obviously willing to help the uninformed like myself.

Martin-

I live in London...if you have any luck with the British Museum, please send me a note and let me know. A number of phone calls and notes from me suggests that they may not even have his collection catalogued...much less available for viewing

I am just getting around to more cataloging of hobby publications. Here is a binder, Approx. 9" x 13", which came with these letters and had many more documents in it, especially lists and cataloging information. I will try to scan some of the lists, definitions etc... from it into this thread. Also, here is the gifting acknowledgement from Wharton-Tigar to Barker.

Interesting thread. Anyone ever see this collection? Wish I knew about it when I went to London a few years ago.

Chad

As I understand it the collection is stored in a warehouse and not at the British Museum. I believe, however, that with advance registration it can be viewed. These viewing times last I heard are extremely limited though.

Thanks for the information. Would definitely enjoy seeing it.

Chad

I found Burning Bright a very enjoyable read. Wharton-Tigar had an amazing life. World corporations and business, World War II, spying, diamond syndicates, cold war activities, card collecting, and much more... the book is a reader's delight. There aren't lots of copies out there, what I was told was that DeBeers diamond people bought up many copies to minimize the public's access to the book. Wharton-Tigar signed many of the ones that are out there.

Thanks to Leon!