Interesting Contemporary Accounts of T204s

[jimonym]

It's been a while since there's been a thread on T204s, so I thought I'd post some items of possible interest to T204 collectors.

The journal Tobacco was an industry journal devoted mostly to covering the news and doings of the small, independent companies, distributors, and retailers who were not associated with the tobacco Trust. The Mentor company, manufacturer of Ramly and T.T.T. brand cigarettes, was one of those, and I found three mentions of what we today call T204 cards in the pages of Tobacco. One of the regular features of each issue was a series of reports from major cities discussing the state of the market in that city, and it was in the Boston columns that I found these. The second excerpt indicates the T.T.T. brand was introduced well after the Ramly T204s began distribution, so it seems likely that there's a fairly good explanation for the rarity of T.T.T. T204s.

April 29, 1909:


August 12, 1909:


August 19, 1909:


And here's an image of the display piece (this one was sold by REA in 2006):