Swap Yer!: The Wonderful World of Football Cards and Sticker Albums

by Rob Jovanovic

For your average 1960s or 70s schoolboy, the week was largely given over to amassing a football card collection, and later, the sticker annual. The cards were swapped with schoolmates, fought over, and more were purchased—yet somehow you still ended up with only the Birmingham City first team. In this history of the football card and sticker annual, Rob Jovanovic traces the history of the playing card right back to the golden age of the cigarette card, charting its development through the decades up to the modern-day sticker album. In doing so, the book provides a nostalgic, photographic history of the game.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

Reviews

[C. John Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing that needs to be mentioned is that we are not talking about North American style football here but instead we are discussing real football here (soccer). The writer gives us a fairly decent history of soccer/football cards in England from the earliest cigarette cards up to the more recent issues. Obviously one could go into more depth on this subject but that is not the idea here. It is simply to introduce the reader to football cards and what they are. It is also written from the perspective of someone who has a passion for these bits of cardboard, and is in fact an avid collector of them. The other feature that makes this book stand out is the heavy reliance on pictures of the cards themselves. Pretty much every major set has some examples shown. All in all this is a good introduction to UK football/soccer cards. It is a book that should be on the shelf of any sports card collector.