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Posted By: 1880nonsports

Snuff, plug, and other minor tobacco manufacturers were slowly being bought up by the ATC up until the breakup. Cards had already been proven a successful marketing tool. Most of their production was in cigarettes but they were diversifying as they grew, They decided to name a brand after a southern superstar baseball player. It was a relatively new (and short lived) "granulated plug tobacco" that could be smoked in a pipe (least popular mode after snuff of ingesting tobacco in the period) or rolled in a cigarette. They designed a tin showing him with a bat on pose and so a portrait image was suggested for the card to differentiate it from the image on the tin - or as the manufacture and sale of these minor types of tobacco products came with small margins - perhaps there were extra sheets laying around and they just used them. I personally would have switched the two images . Maybe as few as 2 sheets might have been produced and but a handful of tins as they planned to introduce the brand. We have no evidence of the tin with tobacco actually ON the shelves.....
In reviewing a non-glossy uncut sheet they were presenting - perhaps someone opined that a glossy front might protect the card (they already had experience with Polar) from the product and they made at least one (if in fact examples in both states exist as suggested earlier). The card after all was an important vehicle to carry their advertising message. I would guess that following their "notices" in the rags they just abandoned the plan to make it. Hundreds and probably thousands of brands never made it to market. The notices in 1910 disturb me a bit as it's a better story if it was from late 1911 .
Things like the find of 5 of these rare cards found in one place and at one time while nearly absent in the marketplace - makes the idea that they were never distributed ring more true for me. Perhaps those and the other examples survived just as many printer's scraps and other annomalies do today - 100 or so years later - cut from the sheets and saved by someone for love of a peach.

I think it's a card.
I don't think it's a T206 as I'm not sure the category itself is well defined.
I don't think it was ever IN a tin.
I think it was planned to put it in the tin.
I don't think the Pirate cards were ever distributed either.....