J Arthur Dixon Postcards

The Golden Age – 1953-1969

This note covers only the colour cards issued between those dates and were of the size 5¾ x 3⅞ inches. During this period I remember racks outside every tourist shop and newsagent, with the flower cards in most gift shops, right up to the early 1970s, when makers like Hinde seemed more successful (goodness knows why).

Before 1953 ‘normal’ (5½ x 3½ in.) size cards Dixons issued in both black and white and in quite crude colour formats. I have not seen anything approaching a definite list of these. After 1969 only larger format cards (5⅞ x 4⅛ in.) were issued, though in fact an increasing number of this larger size were available from the middle 1960s and some areas (Ireland, Isles of Scilly, and many later London) were predominately in this larger format.

I only cover cards from 1 to 7500, but still include about 7000 cards. And note that it does not cover ANY cards issued after 1969, such as those with ANY prefix – L.6, any three-letter combinations beginning with P, etc.

Over the last 20 odd years I have tried to compile lists of all the cards issued, aided by copies of most, but not all, of the Stock Books from Dixons in Isle of Wight. I have had help and compared lists with six other key collectors, listed at the end of this note, and have very largely, but not entirely, sorted out the complexities of the re-numbering and re-issues of the late 1950s. I have also, of course, tried to acquire all the cards

The main run

So, from 1953 Dixons began issuing view and subject cards in this 5¾ x 3⅞ inches format, in three-colour photogravure. These cards all had black backs. Each county, country or subject was numbered from 1. Thus Cornwall had 1 to 29, Lake District 1 to 46, Madeira 1 to at least 80, Shipping 1 to 26, and so on. The only exception seems to be Scotland that always had a designated run from 3400 onwards.
But in 1956 or 1957 almost the whole catalogue was renumbered, with numbers running consecutively from 1. So Flowers became 1-100; Shipping 101-127; Pets and odds and ends, 128-139; and then Derbyshire140-144; Durham 145-148; Lake District 149-190, right up to Wales at 509. I have a Dixon works copy of a pre-1957 catalogue, with the all the new numbers (other than overseas countries) listed in pen against the old printed numbers. I am not at all certain that all the new numbers allocated to the old sequences were actually issued, and I’ve marked my master accordingly. But all those that were issued, and this is a key point, had black backs.

It is from 510 that the problems start. From the Stock Books I can see that Madeira was allocated from 510 onwards, up to about 583, then a gap I cannot yet find, but might be more Madeira. From 600 there are a few from the Canaries, Malta and London, then some new (black backed) UK issues, followed by more Malta and then by Portugal, and some further new (black backed) issues from England and Jersey, taking the sequence up to 874. After that there are some biggish gaps, with some final English and Portugal cards up to 947. All these cards too had black backs.
So, I have accounted for all of these 1-947 numbers, except a relatively few (57 in total), and it is highly probable that all of these must be overseas cards.

But very soon after 1957, and certainly by 1959, the numbers from all of the gaps that had been allocated for overseas cards, whether they were issued or not, together with those from the initial 1 to 509 that had fallen out of favour, were used again for ‘home’ cards. These almost invariably had blue backs (I have found <10 exceptions). To take two entirely random examples: Isle of Wight 27 (black), Farringford, Freshwater, was first allocated to no 388 (black), also Farringford, Freshwater, but was replaced in 1960 by 388 (blue) Cornwall, Gerrans Bay and Portscatho. And another example - Isle of Wight 38 (black), Princess Flying Boat at Cowes, was first allocated to no 399, also Princess Flying Boat at Cowes, but I have never traced that card – I suspect that by then the flying boats had long gone! Very soon, 399 was used for The Needles, Isle of Wight (blue) but by 1959 that too had gone and was replaced by 399 (blue) Norfolk, Blickling Hall.

There are very, very many of these re-issues, with subjects such as Flowers being particularly affected, where at least 56 of the original 100 were replaced, using the same numbers. I have lists of all the permutations in my master worksheets.
After 947, up to 1362, there are the odd reissues, gradually getting less, and after that all is relatively simple!
There is one other query. Many of the Channel Is cards, up to 1233, were re-issued in a larger size, marked M or G, though it is not clear how many were issued. Quite a few of those that were re-issued had a different view.

Scotland.
I have listed the Scottish cards separately, although, for this period, all the cards fall into the 3400 to 5000 range. Obviously Dixon’s had a close link with W.S. Thomson, who issued excellent colour cards in the 1950s; indeed many of the very early Dixons were from Thomson photographs. I have listed the numbers from 3400, but have not been able to discover why the numbering started at 3400, rather than 3000, which is where the England and Wales cards initially ended. I did not find the Stock Books for numbers after 4258, so those listed from 4258 to 5000 are from my own cards supplemented by cards from the other collectors acknowledged at the end.

The ‘Special’ cards.
Certainly from the later 1950s Dixons issued special, ‘SP’, cards for individual commercial customers. I have the stock-book only from SP393 onwards (for some reason the earlier pages were roughly torn out). The stock-book itself is not easy to interpret as the sequential run of numbers have some allocated to postcards, and others to types of promotional material, such as calendars, film stills and the like. It is not always easy to decide, in the absence of a card in my collection, whether or not a particular number was actually used for a card or something else. Obviously I have some cards before SP393, but need help for many more. And presumably quite a few of the numbers up to SP393 were for subjects other than cards as well. But a sizeable minority of ‘Special’ cards did not have numbers, though often those that were unnumbered also exist in a numbered form as well. Were unnumbered ‘Special’ cards produced before a numbering system came into force? Or were they still issued (or reissued) later? My worksheets list all the unnumbered Special cards that I have traced, but I suspect there are quite a few more around. And, of course, some might be in the “missing” numbers SP1-393.

Ports of Call. I have produced worksheets for the cards covering my 1953 to 1969 period for many of the areas the Dixons called “Ports of Call”. These were, originally at least, for the destinations of British cruise ships, where apparently, Mr Dixon used to spend his winter months. The main series of cards were for Madeira, Canaries, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus and Gibraltar. I have not yet produced lists for Spain, for the reason given below. Nor have I listed all the other “Ports of Call” cards, from Aden to Zanzibar though I have a box full, and could go a long way towards such a list with the help of other collectors. By the way, as far as I can tell, alone of the main destinations, the cards for Cyprus were not allocated numbers in the initial sequential run in the same way as those for Madeira, Canaries, Malta, Portugal and Gibraltar. Two minor problems concern some of the Canary Is and Spanish cards. One query is on numbers running from around 369 to 600 odd, and another on those with a completely different numbering system prefaced by ‘E’. I wonder if the first corresponds to unsolved gaps in the numbered Special list. The second must be connected to a local agent issuing their own numbers. I have tried to set these out on my last worksheet, listing these odd numbers against the corresponding Special (SP) numbers. This might be a wild goose chase!

Other series. I have also listed the runs of Geological cards and those for Kew, and these are on this website.
I have not listed the utterly confusing cards produced for the Ministry of Works covering lots of castles and the like. Nor have I yet listed King Sized cards (8⅜ x 5¾ ins) (though I have a list of some, it is so incomplete as not to be worth including), the booklets of pictures for tourist areas, nor the postcards of Goya, a slightly bizarre subject!

Matt and glossy finishes. Many cards, particularly Scottish, exist in both these forms, with the same numbers. London seems to be an exception, where the matt and glossy forms had different numbers. As long ago as the late 1960s I had a letter from the manager at the Inverness office saying that the glossy versions were not a success and that they were phasing them out.

Further work. The specific areas I would really appreciate help on are:

Special, 1-393, any filling in of the blanks on the spreadsheet
Canaries, Malta and Portugal, and to a lesser extent Madeira, both for the early numbers, but also for any renumbered cards from 510 up to 947.
The original black backed issues for 584-600, 831, 875-886, 891-915.

There are a couple of other websites that I have seen, but with the greatest respect, they are incomplete for the period covered by this compilation, and do not seem to have begun to master the problems arising from the re-issuing of earlier numbers. But they do have information on aspects that I haven’t covered, such as information on the backs – the various styles of the Dixon logo, varieties in wording, photographers, and, of course, most also cover numbers issued after 1969, when my listings end.

Acknowledgements
I had some help from the late Mr Alf Dewing, from Emsworth, who wrote a short note on the JAD history in 1989, and whose collection went to Roy Richardson in the Isle of Wight (who has been most generous in sharing his catalogue with me) and then to W.J. Nigh and Sons. I filled a huge number of gaps from an early Dixon photographer, John Edwards from Worcester, but he has now died. Recently I acquired some cards from the collection of the late Phil Wilson from Blackburn, together with his books of lists. David Wilkins from Surrey has kindly sent me a copy of his master list and Malcolm Luty has been unfailingly generous both in supplying information and even letting me have some of his cards!
There is a good history of the Dixon business at: https://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/jadixon.php

This update contains few alterations other than in the Specials and particularly in the Specials_no numbers

David Pearman, Algiers, Feock, Truro, Cornwall, TR3 6RA.

dpearman4@gmail.com

December 2025