The British Company That Printed America's Cards Smaller

If you have looked at 1966 Batman cards for any length of time you will have met A&BC. Same pictures as the Topps set, slightly smaller, and filed here as a separate market. This is who they were.

1949, and everything is rationed

Four men, recently out of military service, decided to start a chewing gum company in London in 1949. Simon Anysz, Rudy Braun, and the brothers Douglas and Tony Coakley.

They wanted to call it ABC, after their surnames. The Aerated Bread Company, which had traded since 1862 and was universally known as the A.B.C. Company, objected. So it became A&BC Chewing Gum Limited, and the ampersand in the name of one of the great card companies is there because a bakery complained.

They set up in a small factory in Cricklewood, north London, and immediately hit the problem that defined the business.

The gum was made of plastic, on purpose

Sugar and sweets were still rationed in post-war Britain. Sweets came off ration in February 1953 and sugar in September of that year, so for A&BC's first four years a child needed coupons to buy confectionery.

The founders worked round it in two ways.

They made the gum from chewable plastic rather than chicle, the natural gum from a Central American tree that the American manufacturers used. And they sweetened it artificially, because sugar required a licence, producing one of the first sugar-free chewing gums sold anywhere.

The point of both decisions was that the product fell outside rationing entirely. Children who could not get sweets could get A&BC's gum, no coupons required, and the company took off almost immediately on that basis.

It is a strange origin for a card company: a confectionery business built on not containing any confectionery.

The Topps arrangement

In 1959 A&BC struck the deal that put them in this index.

The terms were a straight swap. A&BC would be allowed to produce Bazooka, Topps' famous bubble gum, for the British market. In exchange, A&BC would produce Topps' card sets for Britain.

The important detail for a collector is what "produce" meant. A&BC did not import American cards and resell them. They printed them here, on British stock, in British factories, and marked them A&BC. Usually at a reduced size, because British card conventions and British packaging were not the American ones.

More than ninety of the series they printed under that arrangement were non-sport, which is why they turn up constantly in the sets this index tracks.

What they did with Batman

They did not produce a token version. They printed the lot.

This index tracks A&BC classes across all five of the 1966 Batman issues: Black Bat, Red Bat, Blue Bat, Riddler Back and Bat Laffs. The Black Bat run is much the largest, as it is on the American side, with the others behind it.

We have written about why there were five sets in one year and about the gap between cards one and two. The British printings sit alongside all of it, as their own separate markets, because that is what they are.

The thing everyone assumes, which our data does not support

There is a widely repeated idea that the A&BC printings are the better cards, or the scarcer ones, or worth more than their American equivalents.

We cannot support that from what we track, and it is worth saying plainly rather than repeating it.

Across the 1966 Batman cards in this index, the average grade of O-Pee-Chee classes is 5.96, Topps is 5.47, and A&BC is 5.14. The British printing grades lowest of the three, and the Canadian printing grades best.

These are modest gaps rather than dramatic ones, and grade is not price. But if the British cards were systematically better made or better preserved you would expect to see some sign of it, and we do not.

What is true is that they are different cards, which is a separate point from being better ones. Different stock, different size, different print run, different market. That is reason enough to file them apart, and reason enough to check which one a listing is actually describing.

The falling out

The relationship with Topps did not end well.

The two companies were in dispute for some time, and A&BC folded late in 1974, twenty-five years after four demobbed soldiers started it. Topps took over in 1975 and began issuing British cards under its own name from the 1975-76 season.

There is an odd footnote from the final months. Paper bags have surfaced from a previously unknown outfit called A&BC Novelties, trading from the same address as A&BC Chewing Gum, containing among other things 1974 World Cup souvenir posters. Nobody seems to know who was running it or what they were attempting. It reads like a company trying something in its last weeks.

Why any of this matters to a buyer

Three practical points.

Know which printing you are looking at. An A&BC card and a Topps card of the same subject and number are separate markets with separate populations. A listing that says only "1966 Batman #1" has not told you the thing that matters.

Size is the quickest tell. The British cards were generally printed smaller than the American ones, which is visible the moment the two are side by side and often mentioned in the listing if the seller knows what they have.

And do not pay a premium on reputation alone. The idea that the British printings are inherently better is widespread and, on our figures, unsupported. Buy the card in front of you.

The thing worth sitting with

Four men came out of a war, could not get sugar, made gum out of plastic instead, and ended up printing Batman for a generation of British children.

Then they fell out with their American partner and disappeared, and the partner bought what was left.

This index tracks all five 1966 Batman issues in the Topps, A&BC and O-Pee-Chee printings, card by card and grade by grade. You can read how we work the numbers out.

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