Retro football fans can lose whole days meandering around the millions of pictures on Flickr and this post is based upon one particularly impressive photostream we stumbled upon recently. Under his cigcardpix id, Keith has assembled a huge collection of wonderful old cigarette card images and we though we would publish a selection of some of the more eye-catching ones.

The reproductions below are cartoon style caricatures of English club nicknames and were part of a series of 50 given away with packets of Ogden’s cigarettes in 1933. Lateral thinking is required to work out some of the nicknames: the genie on the Clapton Orient card represents, well, the Orient; the Manchester City gentleman is a citizen; Liverpool’s figure is a Mariner and the down and out, Oliver Hardy character representing Bolton is a trotter.

We’ll be publishing more sets in the months to come but in the meantime do visit Keith’s wonderful photostream here.