Collecting Tobacciana & the one and only Wunup Baccy Flap

Tobacciana – a term describing the paraphernalia of tobacco smoking in all its forms, is highly collectable and none more so than the desirable and often hard to come by Wunup Baccyflap tobacco box.

The Wunup Baccyflap disc shaped box is made from Bakelite and was produced around the 1930’s and 40’s. Little is known about the company, but I believe the baccyflap design was taken over by Parker in the 40’s who used a different type of early plastic.

The Parker baccyflaps are more common and don’t have quite the same feel and heavier quality that Bakelite has. Here is an example of a Parker version:

The Wunup variety comes in mottled brown, mottled bronze, mottled burgundy & black.

Below are examples of the different shades. The black version is more scarce.

Wunup also made these Bakelite horseshoe shaped ashtrays and the Koolclean pipe, again, rare items. I’ve only ever come across three horseshoe ashtrays. More common are the Wunup cigarette cases, which come in shades of brown, and a lovely green shade, which is quite unusual. Another item I have come across is the amazing Bakelite Wunup Mystic – a cigarette dispenser.

There are so many wonderful tobacciana items to collect including amber cigar holders, pipes, silver cigarette holders, silver cigar piercers, cigar cases, tobacco boxes, snuff boxes etc etc