Happy Printmas

As we come to the end of the year and celebrate Christmas we though we would share with you some of the fun Guinness World Record attempts:

Most expensive greetings card sold at auction

The most valuable Christmas card in the world was sold at auction in Devizes, Wiltshire, UK on 24 November 2001 for £20,000 and bought by an anonymous bidder.  Measuring 13 x 8 cm (5 x 3 in) it was sent by Sir Henry Cole, a Bath-born businessman to his grandmother in 1843 and is hand-coloured by the London illustrator John Calcott Horsley.

The Christmas card is also considered the world's first Christmas card.  A total 1,000 were lithographed and sold at a shilling each. The card shows a Christmas dinner with three generations of a family enjoying a Christmas party. The side panels show charitable scenes with people clothing and feeding the poor. There are only 12 of the original 1,000 cards still in existence. At one shilling each, an average man's weekly wage, they were only bought by the wealthier classes.

Smallest Christmas card

Scientists at the University of Glasgow, UK, saved on the cost of Christmas cards by making their own in 2010. However, recipients would need a high power microscope to read them! At only 200 x 290 micrometres in size, 8,276 cards would fit on one postage stamp. The card features a Christmas tree etched on to a very small piece of glass. The technology used to produce the card could ultimately make Christmas presents like TVs and cameras of even greater quality and performance than found today.

Most Christmas crackers pulled in one minute by a team of two

The most Christmas crackers pulled in one minute by a team of two is 52 and was achieved by Ashrita Furman and Bipin Larkin (both USA), in New York, New York, USA, on 25 June 2014.