The Carreras tobacconist brand was established in London in 1846 by a Spaniard of the same name. He later sold the brand to in 1903 and the new owner retained the already established brand name.
Carreras entered the cigarette card market a little later than most, not issuing cigarette cards till 1916. They released their first football related cards in 1934 with a series of 75 titled “Footballers”
Original sets are now still fairly common but will set you back in the region of £200, however a reprint was done in 1997 meaning full sets and individual cards can now be picked up fairly cheaply.
In fact I do sell them in my Ebay shop, see the link at the bottom of the page.
Their second series in 1935 was named “Famous Footballers” and consisted of 48 cigarette cards. Again, these are still readily available, however a full set will set you back the best part of £100.
The following year they issued another set of 48 named “Popular Footballers of 1936” and were of the painted portrait variety. Bizarrely these were issued on both white and cream coloured card.
Sets of either are still widely available and will cost you around about the £75 mark.
Along with most other tobacconists the 2nd World War meant that the production of cigarette cards became obsolete due to paper shortages.
However Carreras hit upon the idea of printing pictures on the actual packet, these were printed on the sliding part and were designed to be cut out, a couple of sets were issued in 1947 and 1948.
These are now pretty rare and will usually cost about a tenner each for a nice example.
I do occasionally have some Carreras football cards for sale in my Ebay shop.
To check if I’ve any at the moment follow the link below and enter “Carreras” into the shop search box.