T222 Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

I'm guessing that maybe they just didn't get around to it.

Seems that when they started issuing cards with Fatima cigarettes, they mentioned 100 photos on the back. There are 52 baseball players, 4 other athletes, and 4 actors... that's 60 cards. I think they planned more. They either couldn't or didn't issue all at once. And they quit production before completing 100, or moving beyond.

About 8 years ago I talked with a fellow who collected Fatimas as a kid. I found him because of an article he'd written in a 1920s Baseball Magazine. His address was in my home town, I figured there might be old Baseball Magazines in the attic there. When I asked some quite senior folks about where the guy had lived in the 20's, they discussed it a bit, and finally one of them said, "Why don't you ask him?" I asked what he meant, he told me the guy's still alive, retired, in Fairhope, Alabama. So I called him! We talked about his BM letter, his going to school, college, teaching journalism, being a newspaper editor... at the end I asked him if he collected cards, thinking he might recall T206. Yes, he collected cards, they were really pictures, I probably had not heard of them, big cards. I asked if they had Fatima on the back and he laughed, saying yes! He told me he never could complete the set of 100. He had about 300 of them, but not 100 different. I asked him what happened to them. He said he went to college, and when he came back home that summer, his Mom (are you ready for this???) had thrown them away.... that would have been about 1930. I didn't tell him what Fatima cards sold for nowadays. Seems like those moms were after cards long ago, way before my mom dealt with my cards. And you know, if Moms hadn't been pitching cards all these years, they wouldn't be nearly as valuable.