[canjond]

Thanks everyone for posting. Amazing stuff!

Chris - that’s the first I’ve seen of another Cambyses. Of course, I didn’t even know that connection existed before last week. As Scott said, this is definitely a new combination (black box, Cambyses interior).

I’m starting to agree with Scott that these boxes may have been utilizing either extra box stock, or instead extra label stock (or both), before possibly switching the exterior printing over to Cambyses as well (as opposed to retaining the Mentor language on the front). As of now, I’m not aware of a Ramly box with Cambyses printed on the front, but let’s see if one comes forward. It’s also interesting to note that both of these Cambyses Ramly boxes have 1909, Series of 1910 tax stamps. So, the year of manufacturer is proving important as suspected given a likely transition from Mentor to Cambyses.

There’s also 2 interesting observations that I didn’t note in my write up above because I didn’t know what to make of them, but seeing the new Cambyses box posted now gives additional support to calling it out.

First, if you look closely at the Ramly labels on the 2 Cambyses boxes, you will see that the upper portion of the gold border displays the little raised dots that go across the top of all of the Ramly boxes, including the Mentor Ramly boxes. It's a consistent pattern. However, when you look at the lower gold border on the Cambyses boxes, you will note that the bottom row of raised dots has been trimmed off, even though that bottom row of raised bumps appear on the Mentor Ramly boxes. When I first saw the missing bottom border bumps, I had originally thought that this new Cambyses Ramly box must be slightly shorter than the Mentor boxes, but that thought was quickly dispelled when I compared the sizes, and truth is, the full label would fit on the box from top to bottom.

Second, when you look at the back label seam of the 2 Cambyses boxes, you will see the label overlaps more on the Cambyses boxes when compared to the Mentor boxes. It's really evident when you look at the eagle - it is a bit squished on the Cambyses boxes, and one of the moon and stars is partially cut off (because it’s under the overlapping label). This overlapping is clearly due to the fact that the Cambyses boxes are just slightly smaller than the Mentor boxes width wise. So, going back to the point above about utilizing left over stock, it appears that instead of printing new outer labels that fit the slightly smaller Cambyses boxes, they utilized the left over stock of Mentor Ramly labels that were slightly larger.

These observations may be even more proof that the transition from Mentor to Cambyses happened in 1910, since they are seemingly utilizing left over stock on boxes that likely date to 1910 based on the tax stamps. Again, I wonder if a 1911-1914 Ramly box comes to light, whether that would have Cambyses printed on the front.

Really neat stuff!