Auction #20 - June 2025
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/13/2025
The American Card Catalog broke tobacco cards into two sections--the "N" section for 19th century tobaco cards and "T" for 20th century tobacco cards. Within the "N" section there are ACC classifications up to nearly N700. The "T" section includes standard issues up to T177. In the "N" section, Burdick broke down the numbers by Manufacturers alphabetically and within individual manufacturers he broke the sets down by subject alphabetically. For the "T" section, it was broken down by topic alphabetically.
Within the "N" and "T" classifications, the literally hundreds and hundreds of sets generate thousands and thousands of cards, many of which have variations totaling even more cards. While most people can't collect everything, narrowing down a focus is tough for many of us. You can be a set collector, a subject collector, a manufacturer collector or a type card collector as well. Type Card collecting is just one way to slice up the hobby by collecting one card from each ACC classification within some narrow collection field like all Allen & Ginter cards or all "N" cards or some other slice of the hobby.
This lot is an amazing compendium of (322) cards that includes (215) "N" 19th Century Tobacco Cards and (107) "T" 20th Century Tobacco Cards with many keys. This type card collection was likely created in the 1930's or later and uses photo mounting corners to mount each of the cards into organized manufacturer and ACC classification ordered pages.
The "N" card sections (215) cards are broken down by manufacturer and in relatively uniform ACC order. Many of the cards have been checked and have clean backs and while it can't be 100% determined that ALL cards have clean backs I believe it to be the case that they do based on the cards that could be removed and replaced. The cards are generally in Good to EX condition throughout the book with some exceptions. While I won't comment on ALL cards in the album obviously, there are actually some very nice cards in both the "N" and "T" sections and I'll note some of them below.
The "N" section starts off with one card from each of the Allen & Ginter N1 - N44 sets. The key in this group is the N28 Buffalo Bill card in Fair/Good condition. The next group of cards are Duke small format cards with a key card in that group of the N76 Great Americans John Hancock in VG conditon. The Duke large format cards yields one of the keys in the entire album of the N112 Duke Great Americans trio card for George Washington/Alexander Hamilton/John Hancock in Fair condition with an upper left corner piece that is barely attached. Beyond the N112 card is a VG copy of the N114 Duke Histories of Generals of Robert E. Lee--one of the keys in that set. The Kinney section is next after Duke with no major subjects. Goodwin comes next with clean N162, N166, N167(2 different), N165 and the tough N90 Vechicles Old Judge variant. The Kimball section contains standard types. The next section is the Hall's Between the Acts section which contains a very tough N346 Presidents copy of George Washington in Fair condition with some border issues. The Lorillard section comes next with a clean VGEX copy of the tough N254 Flags set and two tough N269 Prizefighters--Jem Mace (Green toned, VG) and Joe Goss (Brown toned, Poor). The rest of the "N" grouping includes Buchner and Mayo types.
The "T" section starts off with a pair of T6 Murad College Series of two baseball subjects--Fordham (Type 1 print) and Penn State (Type 2 print). Tough type cards in the "T" section include T50 College Series Penn State and others. The T200 and up section covers sports cards and this album has a clean copy of the T200 Fatima Philadelphia Nationals, singles from T202, T203, T205, T206, T207, T209, T212 and (6) T218 Champion Athletes including a nice Jack Johnson Facing Forward, T219, T220, T221, T225 and another of the key cards in the album, the T230 Duke Kahanamoku card in about GVG. Wrapping up the T section are the 1950's Red Man baseball card sets T232(1952), T233(1953), T234(1954) and T235(1955).
Take time to go through the detailed, downloadable PDF that is attached. This is unquestionably a one-time collection from a vintage collector who put a lot of time into creating this piece.
Click above for larger image.