The Second John Baines QPR Football Card

Finney

Martin Botwright suggested to me that a second John Baines QPR football card was known to exist. Then a few months ago Moreno came across it within a collection of cards that were coming up for auction and kindly forwarded me an image of the card which is shown below. The Lot was estimated at between £250 and £350 and included six other Baines cards.

The first card was difficult to date, but this one is even more difficult despite including what looks like a player’s name which I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to decipher. In fact the more you enlarge the image the more the lettering breaks up.

Please get in touch if you have any further details or if you are aware of any other John Baines QPR cards.

John Baines even offered prizes to encourage sales which peaked between 1919 and 1920 when apparently over 13 million were snapped up. Baines sold his business to a company based in Barnsley in the 1920’s.

For further information on these wonderful cards, please visit this excellent website:

http://www.bainesfootballcards.co.uk

Steve Russell

8 thoughts on “The Second John Baines QPR Football Card”

  1. It looks like the second name begins with an L.
    Do we know the rough date of production of these cards as there are various sites/publications listing players of the early days.
    At least we have two apostrophes on the card!

  2. Hi Steve,

    Interesting item. The player is quite clearly O Linkson (Oscar Linkson) who played for the R’s during WW1. He joined during the close season 1915 and died in Aug 1916 in France (I think it was in Somme).

    Cheers
    Kenneth

  4. Steve. He may be mentioned in the Footballers Battalion book. Not sure if you or Kerrins has it now!

  5. Many thanks Kennneth…I was squinting at that for ages !!!! I still have your book Colin….this went up on the Home Page last November:

    ‘Oscar Horace Stanley Linkson: The book mentions this former Manchester United right-back player who was actually arrested on one occasion after absented himself with (Pte Wilfred Nixon of Fulham) to play for the R‚Äôs at White Hart Lane. Pte Linkson was killed on 8th August 1916 and is commemorated at the Thiepval Memorial. His mother never accepted that her son was dead. She chose to believe that he had run away to escape what she believed to be an unhappy marriage. He left behind a widow and two young children at the family home in Barnet.’

  6. Interesting that in that Mirror article there is no mention of Oscar Linkson playing for QPR although every other team he turned out to play for is!
    Well done for solving this little mystery!

Comments are closed.