Posted By:
Keith O'LearyI recently got my tobacco album collection out and had a chance to look through it. In light of the recent questions and postings about these (and not to steal any of Ted's thunder...hes displaying one of the more beautiful, desirable and vintage baseball set related ones created). And incidently, the one I'm about to share with the board was done by the same litho company that printed his. Anyways....
Tobacco albums were issued as a premium (took 50-100 coupons to acquire one) by a large number of the tobacco companies (Allen & Ginter, Duke, Kimball, Gooodwin, etc) between the years 1887 to around 1893 and gave the smoker an opportunity to get the entire card set in a nice, neat little package without having to smoke himself to death trying to complete it one or two cards at a time. Most were issued in conjunction with the card sets that came in their cigarette packs, but not all....the Allen & Ginter George Washington album is an example that didn't have a corresponding card set. Most were bound with string, housed the entire card set and usually had some full page plates with related subject matter included as part of the album package. Since they were printed on thick cardboard plates, many were ripped apart and had the cards cut from the pages. This is what is meant when you see "card cut from album". I see entire pages sold on ebay as well....it makes me cringe when I do.
Where else can you buy a nice N162 Goodwin Champions set in VG condition for $3000 (and get examples of not only the 10 baseball players, but all 50 cards to boot!). Where can you buy a vintage N28 set for $2000, an N184 set in one clean swoop? How about a set of N2 Indians for $500, how about a set of N78 Civil War Generals, the N13 Allen & Ginter Game Birds set for 100 bucks? I feel these vintage issues have long been undervalued and under appreciated.
With all this said, I pulled a very rare one out and thought I'd share some of the beauty of these great issues (easy Leon....theres a vintage baseball angle here 
). Its the A38 Goodwin Games & Sports album done by the Julius Bien (who I feel did some of the most beautiful ones) Litho Co. The printing and adornments they did are unsurpassed IMHO.
I hope everyone enjoys, here are some of the pages...
front cover
back cover
baseball related with cards pictured
full plate 1
full plate 2
full plate 3
Keith