Beatles ACTUAL SGT PEPPER Vintage GENERAL BABINGTON Ogden's Cigarette Card+BONUS

Description

For sale here is a vintage Ogden's Guinea Gold cigarette card, from their "Prominent British Officers" series that was printed around 1901. This card portrays Major-General James Melville Babington, who gained fame during the Second Boer War (1899 to 1902) in South Africa. He is better known today because the Beatles chose an image of him as the basis for their fictional Sgt. Pepper character.
The cigarette card is 1.5 inches wide and 2.25 inches tall. It is in good condition for an item approximately 121 years old, with just some light wear (see the close-up images). The image is printed slightly off center, but this is common on these cards.
As a free "Bonus", I will be including an 8-3/8" x 11" color COPY of the image of Babington that appeared in the "Celebrities of the Army" book that was published in 1900.
If you take a close look you will see that this is obviously THE image that was chosen by the Beatles to create the Sgt. Pepper caricature in the album "cutout" sheet. Except for the fact that the image has been reversed, and that he was "demoted" from Major-General to Sergeant (I guess that "Major-General Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" wouldn't have sounded quite right), the positioning of Babington is identical. It explains why Sgt. Pepper's hands appear to be "floating" above his lap. In the picture of Babington from the "Celebrities of the Army" book, his hands are in that position because they are resting on the hilt of his saber. The Sgt. Pepper caricature eliminated the weapon, but did not modify the placement of his hands.
The COPY of the Babington picture was made directly from a page that I removed from an actual 1900 "Celebrities of the Army" book.
I took the original page to a local print shop and had them make a double-sided copy of the page on 60-lb matte-finish "vellum" paper. That way the biographical information that appeared on the back side of the page in the book is in exactly the same position on the back side of the copy.  In the first and last images attached to this listing, the copy is shown alongside the actual Ogden's Guinea Gold cigarette card, so that you can get a better idea about the relative sizes.
Shipping is FREE to buyers in the continental U.S. via USPS First Class Mail.
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Please feel free to contact me with any questions that you may have, and thank you for looking at my listing!