A very nice reference piece for those interested in the history of cards and for those that often run upon odd issues would be an old issue of the London Cigarette Card Company's annual Tobacco Catalogue and its' companion the Trade Card Catalogue.
These list every worldwide issue from the 1800's on through whatever issue you can pick up. Very brief despcription listing issuer, size of card and number in set. No listings of individual cards in each set though. Few photos.
I don't know if they still offer printed catalogues or not but they do have an active website that I can't seem to search very well. Their chief competitor in the UK is the Murray Card Co. but I never found their catalogues quite as informative.
Also Beckett offered a non-sports big book a number of years ago that I have refered to a thousand times over the years including last week for some boxers and indian cards I ran across.
All of these should be very cheap when found and nice to have on the shelf.
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