Back in the early 1900s, it was common for the cigarette companies to include some kind of collectible with a pack of smokes. Sports champions from many sports were pictured on card sets that targeted national or regional interests. In the USA, where baseball was king, some cigarette companies offered baseball cards with cigarettes. If you are a baseball fan you have heard of the rare Honus Wagner card that came with Piedmont and Sweet Caporal cigarettes. It became especially rare because Honus was the greatest player of his day, and he stopped the company from issuing the card. (That was once the most expensive baseball card to acquire. A Honus Wagner card sold for $7.25 million in a private sale in 2022. It is no longer the grand prize of collectors, however, having recently been relegated to second place by the Mickey Mantle rookie card, which has sold for more than $12 million.)
Other companies offered cigarette cards with different themes: famous people, locomotives, famous castles, animals, ocean liners, etc. A company called Gallaher’s created many sets of cards, including one that we would now call life hacks. Here are ten from that series.
No 92 is “How to increase lung power.”
Strangely enough, the advice is not to quit smoking. As I understand it, Cigarettes were first called “coffin nails” in the late 1800s, so that particular card took some chutzpa.