Reviving the ancient custom

I found reference to the Obak baseball cards in an issue of the United States Tobacco Journal from 1909.

United States Tobacco Journal - October 9, 1909
from Google Books

I found several different advertisements from 1910 that featured the Obak brand, but I haven't found one for the smokes featuring cards.

San Francisco Chronicle - June 8, 1910
from GenealogyBank.com

Here's an example of the T212 Obak cards.

Obak T212 - Hogan
from the Library of Congress

A nickel a pop?  I'd buy them by the carton.

Sam Rosen & Gordon B. Taylor - baseball card dealers

Another "I sure wish I hadn't traded my time machine for a Bip Roberts rookie card" moment.

The Sporting News - May 29, 1957

The Sporting News - September 4, 1957

The Sporting News - April 30, 1958

The Sporting News - March 25, 1959

All of these ads are from PaperOfRecord.com. 

Tales of the Turkish Trophies

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Repost - Cabinet Size Phototypes of Base Ball Players.

I originally posted this October 12, 2011. Since then it has had 4,749 views. 155 this week. There's nothing in the post to draw those numbers. I think that the spam type sites are pushing traffic this way. I'm always grateful for traffic, but I think that it is traffic that doesn't necessarily want to be here.  So, I'm removing the old post and reposting it.  I've even included the one comment that the original post got.  Maybe that will level things out a bit.

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I was poking around the LA84Foundation.org site last evening looking for some info on the Tri-Copper League of Arizona.  I stumbled across this advertisement for what we now know as the W600 series of cards.

Sporting Life - November 23, 1907

Interesting to note that in the above ad, Ty Cobb is listed as Tyrus W. Cobb.  His middle name was Raymond.

W600 Sporting Life Cabinet
Tyrus R. Cobb

Cobb card image lifted from Goodwin & Co.

Bam-Bee-No Baseball Game ad

Illustrated World, vol. 36 - 1921

Old Mill Newspaper Advertisements

I was doing a bit of research the other day for a fellow SABR member. I saw an unrelated newspaper ad for "Chinese Baseball". While looking at that page, I found an ad for Old Mill Cigarettes.  We know them as the the cigarettes that came with the T-206 baseball cards.

The earliest ad that I found was from early March, 1910.  The cards were positioned as "Baseball pictures".  I've gathered a sampling of the ads from various states and present them in chronological order.

The Times Dispatch - Richmond, Virginia
March 2, 1910

Daily Public Ledger - Maysville, Kentucky
April 8, 1910

Daily Public Ledger - Maysville, Kentucky
June 10, 1910

Daily Public Ledger - Maysville, Kentucky
June 17, 1910

Daily Public Ledger - Maysville, Kentucky
June 24, 1910

In Texas, the ad copy varies.  They are featuring "Texas League baseball pictures".

Palestine Daily Herald - Palestine, Texas
September 12, 1910

El Paso Herald - El Paso, Texas
October 18, 1910

In Honolulu, they drop the ad copy, but continue to show the picture of the pack with the cards.

Evening Bulletin - Honolulu, Territory of Hawai'i
July 20, 1911

Evening Bulletin - Honolulu, Territory of Hawai'i
August 17, 1911

There probably are other examples showing various sporting or manly type activities.  Although women are featured in some of the ads, they are not shown smoking.

This is not a 'new' find.  Guys on the Net 54 Vintage Baseball Card Forum were discussing this in December of 2008.

UPDATE: I found a site, jimonym.com, that has 26 different Old Mill ads.  There is nothing new under the sun.

images from the Library of Congress's Chronicling America - Historic American Newspapers

Whitey Hawking Post

I was not even four months old when this issue of LIFE magazine hit the newsstands.  Always nice to see Mark Antony smoking.  And Liz not wearing a wedding ring.

LIFE - April 13, 1962

On page eight of that issue we see Whitey Ford hawking Post Cereal Trading cards. 

image lifted from this ebay auction

I didn't know about these Mantle and Maris cards with advertising backs until doing some searching for baseball related advertising images for a previous blog entry.

This is a far cry from the earliest baseball card advertising I've seen (here and here).

E. T. Phone Home

Google Books has a nice copy of Successful Farming, from 1916. The cover from the February issue shows a pilgrim wannabe defending the hen house, probably from some wily fox.


The magazine is filled with such interesting articles as, "On the Trail of the Eggs", "Beauty and Utility in Silos", and the ever gripping, "Sanitary Hog Quarters". They also have wonderful advertisements for such useful items as automobiles, boots, tires, seed, and baseball cards. Yep, on page 145, right below an ad for ACME Quality Paints is the following:


They were promotional cards, with advertising on the back. They were akin to the 1916 M101-5 series from The Sporting News.

I've copied the entry from the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. From the info on the back of the card shown, it would appear that to get the complete set, a child would have to coerce his father into subscribing to Successful Farming for seven years, at the whopping cost of $1.00.

Successful Farming started out in 1902. It is still in publication.

And who was the man behind this magazine?

None other than Edwin Thomas Meredith. Mr. Meredith was born in 1876 and died in 1928 at the age of 51. For 13 months (Feb. 1920 to Mar. 1921) he was the US Secretary of Agriculture, serving under President Woodrow Wilson. After his time as Ag Secretary his publishing company also produced Fruit, Garden, and Home. That later became Better Homes and Gardens.

Here's an image I snagged from eBay a while back, when I was doing some research for this post.

Thanks, E.T. Meredith, for having the savvy to promote your magazine with baseball cards. Collectors the world over thank you.

Another early baseball card ad

From the August 21, 1909 issue of the Sporting Life...

Early baseball card ad

From the July 3, 1909 issue of Sporting Life magazine...

Image taken from the pdf copy at la84foundation.org.