Found: uncut 1940s packaging

Sheets of uncut cigarette packaging dating back to the 1940s have been discovered under the carpet of a house in Bristol, England, according to a BBC Online story.

The sheets bear the designs of Players Navy Cut, Rough Rider and Double Ace, cigarette brands said to be linked to Imperial Tobacco, which is headquartered in Bristol.

It is thought that the sheets had slight imperfections and that workers at the printing factory where they were produced were allowed to take them home to be used, in this case at least, for carpet underlay.

Clearly, counterfeiting was not a big problem in the 1940s.

The six sheets were found by a couple while renovating their house and some have been donated to a museum.

The senior curator industrial and maritime history at the M-Shed museum, Andy King, said the packaging was a relic of Bristol’s history as the UK’s biggest tobacco production centre until the 1980s.