I own a substantial collection of British tobacco advertising boards which were made as ‘give-aways’ to pubs to promote the cigarette brands. On the underside of these boards were three styles of serial numbers, all of which contained the letters `LT.C.'. I'd always idly wondered how old the boards were, what these numbers stood for, and which style was the oldest and how they had changed over time. I never had any real hope of finding out until I read Michael Hanson's (#133) response to Bette Bemis' request for information on these LT.C. boards in the November 1999 issue of "Members of the Board". Michael reported that the letters stood for The Imperial Tobacco company. And thus started an odyssey that lasted six months...

Upon learning what I.T.C. meant I logged onto the Net and searched through a seemingly endless number of sites until I decided to try a service that locates businesses throughout the world; and there it was, The Imperial Tobacco Group PLC complete with their Bristol address, telephone and fax numbers, an e-mail address and a company history!

I immediately fired off a letter with two pages of questions about the boards and their advertising campaign. Weeks went by and then came their letter. Oh boy, I thought, here's everything we need to know. Yeah, right! I was informed that no one there knew anything about the boards, since the ad campaign had ended long ago and all the records had been donated to an archive. They were kind enough to give me the address of the Bristol Records Office.

Once again I send my list of questions. Weeks go by and finally their response arrives! Well, the records they have are only business papers and a check of their inventory showed that they had nothing on the campaign. But the archivist informed me that the artifacts and some other records had been donated to the Bristol Industrial Museum.

than I do"! We had a few nice chats and I ruthlessly used my status as an ex-museum curator to get him to scour their records for anything they might have.

That seemed to be the end of my quest. I had to console myself that at least I had helped them catalog their collection. Then, from out of the blue, I get an e-mail with a nugget of information, but a real treasure! But first a little history.

At the turn of the century the tobacco industry in England consisted of 500 small companies, each producing a few brands of cigarettes. In 1901, The American Tobacco Company, after expanding to capture virtually all of the American market, started a program to take over as much of the European market as it could. They set aside an astronomical sum of money ($30 million) to "attack" the British market.

One of these British companies held the patent on the then most efficient mass producing cigarette machine. ATC had acquired the rights to this machine in America, which allowed them to out-compete their smaller competitors and form a monopoly. This British company, Ogden's, had expanded very rapidly due to its use of the new machine, and were short of capitol as a result. ATC targeted them for take-over and, with its financial resources, quickly accomplished their goal. Then it set its sights on the next biggest companies. Badly shaken, these companies decided their only chance for survival was to form a consortium. WD & HO Wills, John Player and Sons, and Lambert and Butler, the next three biggest companies, called a meeting of 13 of the leading companies and formed a merger that led to The Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland, LTD in December, 1901. Other companies soon joined the original fifteen. Although they were now branches of the same company they continues to use their own brands.

Ogden's, under control of ATC, soon faced bankruptcy, and ATC eventually sold Ogden's to LT.C. and ceased their efforts to capture the British market. LT.C., in a deal with ATC, acquired the UK rights to American cigarette

brands and sold the rights of some of their brands to ATC for the US market. Enough history - now for the boards.

The three styles of markings are: 1) a symbol that looks like a half-circle atop a bar - within the circle are the letters ITC interposed on one another, and the serial number is in the bar; the stamp comes in black or red: 2) a die-cut stamp that is ink-filled with the letters ITC in regular lettering, followed by the number: 3) an inked stamp that looks like #2. Occasionally the number is followed by a letter. Boards of the same brand but in different colors had different numbers, making things even more difficult.

I had been trying to figure out the relative ages of these marks by the apparent age of my boards and had tentatively decided that the circle-and-bar was the oldest. I was more or less correct, as it turns out.

My British curator buddy had managed to dig up a list of 14 serial numbers along with the dates of the boards with these numbers. Now we are able to get approximate dates on our boards. Just use the list below and place the number of your board between the two closest ones.

So, it looks like these boards are much older than I thought. My suspicions about the symbol mark being the oldest is more or less confirmed, at least as represented in my collection; it appears on boards until the mid-1930s. The die cut, ink-filled mark appears on the boards in the same mid-thirties period; I has always thought that this was second oldest. My tentative placing of the inked stamp as the newest mark is born out, appearing in the 1950s. Oh well, I can't be right ALL of the time (rats!). The plastic boards (Have a Capstan; Wills's Gold Flake; Wills's Woodbines) all bear consecutive numbers and date to c. 1953.