In the 1960s children played outside all year round. Games had a season, with the exception of football which took place all year round. Children’s TV programmes were few in number and mothers busy with manual housework did not want children hanging about in the house. Children simply went out to play – in the street or, if it was not given over entirely to vegetables, in the garden.
Some seasonal games were weather related, for instance sledging, and others linked to big sporting events like Wimbeldon, when for a few days in June every kid dug out a tennis racket and batted a well worn ball from one side of the street to the other.
Just like today, however, children liked collecting, and one of those pastimes was scraps, paper pictures which you could buy in local shops. I still have my original collection but which I have added to over the years.
Collecting scraps started when advertisers in the 19th century used lithographic printed images to promote the latest products. The Victorians loved the little bits of paper images and used them in decoupage or pasted into scrap books. It became a field for collecting and was particularly popular in Germany, Sweden, Britain and the USA. 19th century scraps are valuable because there are so few of them left but the designs were beautiful and many have been reproduced.
In the 1960s collecting and swapping scraps was a summer pastime in those long holidays from school which seemed to have no end. Each child kept their scraps in old books, not stuck down, but one to each page. Sitting outside with friends children would pass their book over to a friend who in turn would do the same. Great care was taken as the pages would be turned and each individual scrap studied. If a scrap was desired it would be slid to the top of the page so that it stuck slightly up. The whole book would be meticulously gone through, closed, and handed back.
The books would then be opened by their owners who would turn to every page with a scrap sticking up and either agree to swap it (scrap remained up) or disagree (scrap was slid down the page). Everyone wanted sets. Sets were collections of the same image but graded in size: everything from angels to gnomes, and Father Christmas to baskets of flowers.
Pocket money was limited to the price of a Beano and a few penny sweeties, but for those who helped their mum with the shopping, which was all done locally, they might be rewarded with a chance to buy a page of new scraps. They were printed in sheets. Sometimes it would be the same image repeated to fill the sheet which was the least desired option as only one image was required and all the others would have to be swapped. The best option was when the sheet contained a variety of images and these would have themes: Christmas, flowers, babies, fairies, children, nature etc. Some of the images were beautiful being reproductions of religious art and some were informative with notes attached.
Everyone had their own favourites which they would never swap, no matter how many scraps were offered just for that one special picture. In the sixties, finding ones from Sweden or Germany was difficult and therefore sought after because the printing process used resulted in a different appearance. Today these can be simply found online which does not come with the same thrill as engaging in tricky negotiations with a friend, whilst sitting on their doorstep, on how many British scraps are worth one Swedish one.
Collecting is an obsession. For children, collecting scraps was a powerful one for a few weeks each summer and then it would pass. Those collections will have disappeared into attics and cupboards but most likely were thrown out long ago. The memories of those days of bartering, swapping and collecting little printed pictures remain.
Fiona Grahame
This article first appeared in The Orkney Vintage Club Magazine 2025