Mitcham Aquarium Fish Trading Cards

[Innesfan34 18]

As kids, we Yanks had baseball cards to trade. Our British cousins had these, Mitcham Foods Aquarium Fish Trading Cards, circa 1957. Each card came in a package of Mitcham processed Gruyere Cheese. There were 50 different cards. That's a lotta Gruyere.

I feel like I missed out. I do wish I had had the opportunity to say, "I'll trade you one Mickey Mantle for one Nannostomus trifasciatus..."

 

[anewbie]

As kids, we Yanks had baseball cards to trade. Our British cousins had these, Mitcham Foods Aquarium Fish Trading Cards, circa 1957. Each card came in a package of Mitcham processed Gruyere Cheese. There were 50 different cards. That's a lotta Gruyere.

I feel like I missed out. I do wish I had had the opportunity to say, "I'll trade you one Mickey Mantle for one Nannostomus trifasciatus..."

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Well.... as a kid would you prefer the bubble gum that came with baseball trading cards or the cheese that came with fish trading cards

 

[GaryE]

I consider that very civilized. I had baseball, hockey, Beatles, American Civil War (?) and science fiction creature cards. Not a tropical fish in the lot.

 

[bgarthe36 53]

Yeh…..wish I had all my baseball cards from when I was a kid. I could probably have made big bucks selling them. Who knows, maybe I could have afforded building a mega fish room/building including multiple 300-500g tanks, indoor koi ponds that opened out to outside koi ponds. Oh well…gotta dream. I’m glad for what I have atm.

Gotta say…..those fish cards do look cool.

 

[Innesfan34 18]

Here are the other 25 cards in the set, compliments of Museum of Aquarium and Pet History.

https://moaph.org/article-archives/aquarium-and-aquatic-life-trade-cards/

Mills Cigarettes, also of the UK, issued a similar set for their cigarette packs.

 

[GaryE]

Mills Cigarettes, also of the UK, issued a similar set for their cigarette packs.

As a kid, I never would have gotten Gruyere cheese, but smokes? Half my classmates in Grade six had those.

 

[Mr Limpet14 23]

Dome-heads and Flat-headed Chapers - I have both (Laetacara curviceps and Epiplatys dageti Monroviae, but in all of my years in the hobby I’ve yet to see Cope’s Spotted Characins (Copeina guttata) in the flesh.

 

[Innesfan34 18]

Dome-heads and Flat-headed Chapers - I have both (Laetacara curviceps and Epiplatys dageti Monroviae, but in all of my years in the hobby I’ve yet to see Cope’s Spotted Characins (Copeina guttata) in the flesh.

Yes, the 'popular names' are pretty literal and flat-footed. I doubt they were in common usage. As for C. guttata, now that you mention it, neither have I! Yet it is treated as a well-known species in the literature.

 

[Back in the fold1]

I would have loved to have those cards . Better than baseball cards !

 

[GaryE]

It says a lot about how popular the aquarium hobby was in that era. We fishkeepers can't pretend to be anywhere near as common as we were in my grandfather's era. As a kid, I could walk to seven urban aquarium stores within thirty minutes of my grandparents' flat.
Now, if I started from that point, I would need forty minutes by metro or car to get to one store, and that one wouldn't be better than most of the neighbourhood ones were.

One of those long gone stores was the place for tetras. One had the first saltwater tanks I ever saw, and all the new import discoveries. The others were quality Mom and Pop type stores. There were a lot of people keeping fish - my grandfather called it a fad. I didn't know it was big enough to support trading cards. I would have gone in for those, although the actual illustrations look very much like the book I had as a kid, the title and author of which I don't recall (it was lost in a move when I was 13).

My childhood plan was to open a fish store - one of those neighbourhood walk in spots with fewer tanks than I now have in my fishroom. Things changed in the economics of the trade....

 

[Back in the fold1]

It was nice for me too here in my little burg back in the olden days . There were three Mom and Pop’s and Sears , Kresge’s and Woolworth’s had a pet section with fish . I’m glad I saw it .

 

[Innesfan34 18]

A similar story here. I had a huge extended family on the maternal side and nearly all the aunts and uncles had aquariums. One of the uncles gave me my first copy of Innes as a birthday present. And tropicals were sold everywhere. Not only in pet shops but also department stores. Macy's in Herald Square had a huge pet department with rows of tanks filled with more than just the bread and butter species.

I still have cousins in the hobby and we gather once a year to 'go fishing' which is a tour of the shops that are left. One year we'll do Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens, or Nassau/Suffolk counties on Long Island, or a tour of northern N. Jersey...etc.

 

[TwoTankAmin30]

I would bet non fish card compares in terms of value to this which explains a lot. Baseball cards only existed in countries which played the sport to the extent it became a big spectator event.

The American Tobacco Company decided to introduce baseball advertising cards into their tobacco products with the issue of the T206 White Border Set in 1909. The cards were included in packs of cigarettes and produced over three years until the company was dissolved. The most famous card, and most expensive for the grade, is the Honus Wagner card from this set; Wagner objected, so only a small number were ever distributed. According to cardboardconnection.com, as of 2015, it is estimated that less than 60 of the T206 Honus Wagner cards still exist. By last count, there were 57 known examples. In 2021, a T206 Wagner card was sold in a private sale for $7.5 million, a record amount for a sports card.

I remember the late 1950s with baseball cards and bubblegum. We traded them and flipped them in competition. "No stiff-arms allowed......"

No self respecting kid would be caught dead with a pocket full of fish cards.

 

[Innesfan34 18]

Regarding the gruyere--it wasn't fancy. It was a processed cheese. It's relationship to real gruyere is akin to that between processed American cheese and cheddar. It was packaged in small snack-size wedges. We had a similar product here in the USA made by Swiss Knight. A wedge was a frequent addition to school lunchboxes.

 

[GaryE]

I had similar wedges of cheese around Christmas as a kid, but only then.

Fish cards would have been fine here. Hockey cards ruled, with baseball around. I sold a Mickey Mantle card in the 90s. But TV shows had their own series, there were historical ones, all kinds. I learned about the Beatles via their Tv cartoon on Saturday mornings, but I had fab four cards. Cards were popular. You just couldn't mix them in games - no one would use Herman Munster to win Thurman Munsen.