The "tobacco cards were used as package stiffeners" myth

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by darkhorse9

I'm not sure why people use the claim that T206 cards and similar tobacco cards were used to help stiffen the cigarette packages.

Tobacco cards didn't begin distribution until the Duke cigarette company developed the sliding box packaging around 1886. Other manufacturers like Kinney, Allen & Ginter, and Godwin quickly followed suit.

The packages were already firm with the box. The cards were purely for advertising and marketing and served no physical value to the pack.

Civil War veteran and Tobacco tycoon, William Smith Kimball, produced his cigarette brand in the Peerless Tobacco Works in Rochester, NY.
In 1867, Kimball took over this Tobacco Co. and transformed this factory using modern, more efficient cigarette manufacturing equipment
which by the 1880's was producing 750 Million cigarettes a year.
Originally, small rectangular pieces of BLANK cardboard were inserted in their packs as stiffeners. Kimball was one of the first
to have these pieces of cardboard printed with Sports images (N184).


. .



Checklist printed on the back of the Kimball cards......






TED Z

T206 Reference
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