Vintage Card Of The Month: 1939 Churchman's Cigarettes Boxing Personalities Gene Tunney

This month’s VCoM is a boxing card from 1938 Churchman’s Cigarettes. Churchman’s Tobacco is an English company go back to the 1700s and in 1898 they began inserting cards in to their packs with football players (soccer) being the first subjects. They continued to include cards in their tobacco products until around 1940 or 1941, ceasing due to the war. Over the 40 year period the cards included footballers, cricket players, golfers, tennis players, boxers and even got Babe Ruth in to a 1929 set.

My brother was in the Navy and in the mid-90s he was stationed in England and he found a card shop in the town he was living in that he enjoyed visiting. The owner wanted Michael Jordan cards and I was just beginning my vintage collection so my brother and I worked a deal where I would ship him Jordan cards and the owner of the shop would ship me tobacco era cards. In one of those shipments he sent a nice selection of the 1938 Churchman’s Boxing cards, which this Tunney card was included.

Gene Tunney was a fighter bewtween 1915 and 1928 and in that 13 career he fought 85 fights going 65-1-1-1 with 48 KOs, the other 17 fights were Newspaper Decisions (A no decision bout by record but a decision is made by a newspaper) and do not count for or against his record. During his time he was the American Light Heavyweight Champion between 1922-23 and World Heavyweight Champion between 1926-28.

If you are wondering, yes now I regret sending all of the Michael Jordan cards. Every Jordan card that I pulled for a 2-3 year period were shipped to my brother, so figure probably 100 or so cards that I would have loved to have in my collection. Now had I received the 1929 Babe Ruth card I would have been fine but alas no luck.