T207 Recruit Cigarette Boxes

(front)

The tobacco cards, or T-cards, are some of our favorite Pre-War baseball cards here at DeansCards.com, but since they haven't been manufactured in over a century, it can be difficult to picture these little scraps of cardboard in their brand-new form. Fortunately for us, we came across a few Recruit cigarette boxes sitting in our Non-Sports inventory and we figured out exactly what they were.

(back)

The Recruit Cigarette brand was owned by the American Tobacco Company, which owned dozens of cigarette brands in the first decade of the 20th century. The front of boxes themselves have brand name Liggett & Myers Company, which had been purchased by the American Tobacco Company several years earlier. The T207 cards were one of the last sets to be produced before the American Tobacco Company was dissolved due its monopoly on the tobacco industry. The Recruit back is the most common for the T207 cards, but there are also Broadleaf, Cycle, Napoleon, and Red Cross back variations.

When we originally found these boxes, we were hoping to find "pack fresh" T207 cards, but instead we found several dozen T59 Flags of All Nations cards. These Non-Sports cards are very interesting, but are much more common than high-grade T207 cards.

One of our favorite resources for cigarette card information, including the containers or boxes in which cigarette cards were originally placed, is baseballandtobacco.com.

Just In: 1961 & 1962 Post Near Sets

1961 Post #132 Roberto Clemente (COM)

We just received a very large collection that included two rare items - a 1961 Post Cereal near complete set and 1962 Post Cereal near complete set. While most of these cards are pretty commonly available, the sets can be difficult to put together because many of the cards were made in much shorter supply. Most Post cards were made available on the back of cereal boxes and could also be purchased directly from the Post Cereal Company in the form of team sheets. The "company-purchase" cards now go by the designation "COM", while the cards cut out of the box are designated by the phrase "BOX". However, a few cards were printed only on the back of the boxes. Because the primary cereal consumers were kids, many of the cards that were printed only on the boxes are now difficult to find. Other cards were just made in short supply and could probably be called "short prints".

1962 Post #5 Mickey Mantle (ad)

The 1961 Post Cereal near complete set is missing only three cards: #93 Jim Lemon, #94 Chuck Stobbs, and #183 Roy McMillan. The 1962 Post Cereal near complete set is missing four cards: #82 Ted Kluszewski, #83 Bob Allison, #125 Jim Brosnan, and #188 Ernie Banks. We also have 1961 and 1962 Post Cereal baseball cards for sale individually.

Update: 1934 Goudey error card

Our 1934 Goudey #53 George Watkins error card just arrived back from SGC and is on our site and available for purchase. This card has been on quite the journey, as we have had to send it to two different grading companies in order to get the white background variation acknowledge. SGC finally did acknowledged the white background variation and gave it a grade of SGC 4 VG/EX. We have received many calls and emails about this card because it appears to be a one-of-a-kind item, so we are glad that we can finally put it up on our site.  You can click here to read our blog article from several months ago about the card.