Dear friends of the horror genre, you no longer have to go to the cinema or sit in front of the computer to get a dose of horror.

It is enough to buy a pack of cigarettes since these warnings and shock pictures are on them.

Smoking causes strokes!

Smoking threatens your potency!

Smoking causes throat cancer!

It's all pretty bad.

Smoke is deadly!

Not nice either.

In addition, pictures with stumps of legs, ulcers, tar lungs and whatever else.

Not a nice topic.

Also none that David Banks cares about.

Banks, an elderly Brit with selected manners, does not smoke.

But he loves pictures in packets of cigarettes.

Many a German tourist in London may have seen it before.

Mister Banks has booth number 42 on Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill, where he sells cigarette cards.

Pictures, cards that were enclosed in cigarette boxes in Great Britain and elsewhere between 1890 and 1940, at a time when the smoking world was still all right.

The stars of the thirties

Each card was part of a collection set of 25 or 50 motifs on a theme. Often for sports. Mister Banks has a lot of them - baseball, cricket, soccer, basketball - and he sold me one of the nicest ones last week. A set of 50 "Tennis" from 1936. You should see it! A dream! Two passe-partouts with 25 pictures each of astonishing quality. On the front of each a tennis star of the thirties in action, all in white against a green background, plus a small graphic and the name of the stroke.

John Van Ryn, Wimbledon winner 1929, 1930 and 1931, demonstrates a high backhand volley in long trousers and perfect elegance.

Miss Helen Jacobs, four times American champion from 1932 to 1935, can be admired with a deep, very deep backhand volley.

On the back of the cards the strokes and their technique are explained - training tips from the thirties.

Some of the original cards have become scarce and expensive, says Mister Banks.

They achieved high prices on the collector's market, such as those of Honus Wagner, an American baseball superstar of the early 20th century.

In 2016, one of his cards sold for $ 3.12 million.

I cannot hope for a similar added value, because the Wagner portrait from the T206 series was not included in a cigarette packet more than 200 times.

Wagner had production and distribution prohibited.

Some sources say he did not agree with the award.

Others said he was a staunch non-smoker.

Whatever the case, cigarettes back then were as harmful as they are today.

But the images they conveyed weren't horror.

They were a treat.