New info regarding the Hindu and Old Mill Southern Leaguers
 

It has long been thought that the southern league players were printed
with Hindu backs during the 150 series and that they were printed with Old Mill
backs in the early printing of the 350 series but that might not be the case.

The first known Hindu ad that showed pictures of but didn't mention southern
leaguers ran on August 13 1909.
Attachment 330858

The first known ad that mentioned the southern leaguers ran on August 23 1909.
Attachment 330859

I recently discovered this Old Mill ad that ran for a week in a Tampa
newspaper beginning on August 14 1909.
Attachment 330860

It seems that Eli Witt was quite an entrepreneur who had ties
with R.J. Reynolds.
Attachment 330861Attachment 330862

Pat - Your research is INCREDIBLE!!
 

Keep up the AMAZING work!

Pat--Terrific research and thanks for sharing. I have a piece on Southern League players at Scot Reader's invaluable website, T206insider.com. If I revise my essay I will most certainly have to mention the OM/Hindu connections.

Here's a link to my essay:

http://www.t206insider.com/store/c1/insider#research/

Cheers,
Mike

Awesome Pat, thanks for sharing.

Time to ask a stupid question ...
 

Looks like Eli Witt was quite the seller of tobacco products. This link was sent to me several years back from Chris Browne who found it for me, leading me to believe it was pretty easy for Howe to amass a large collection if that many folks were buying cigarettes from his family store and maybe just giving them to him or leaving them behind. But what are tobacco tags? Would these have had anything to do with either the Piedmont, Old Mill or Hindu brands? Or are these from loose leaf tobacco for those who rolled their own?

http://i.imgur.com/lEJX2AA.png

Thanks Howard, Mike and Bryan.

Mike I read your essay when it when it was first posted on Scot's site
and I read it again today very informative and well done.
You may already know this but I learned that Sam Strang's father was
the 2nd president of the Southern Baseball Association.

I'm not sure if they were part of the pack or in the pack but they were
like stamps that could be exchanged for merchandise.

Attachment 330915

Good stuff thanks :)

Hindu and Old Mill Southern Leaguers
 

Great information always Patrick! Thank you.
Art M.

A nice history of tobacco tags:

http://www.academia.edu/184266/Some_...he_Tobacco_Tag

This is awesome! Thanks for posting Pat!

Great stuff, Pat.

An original T206 collection from South Carolina, which I acquired back in 2006 of approx. 400 cards essentially reinforces your research.
This collection of assorted PIEDMONT 150 and 350 cards included 29 - OLD Mill Southern Leaguer's. The owner of these cards got them
from his Grandfather, who he said collected them in his youth exclusively in 1909.


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

Thanks Ted. Finding the ad has me wondering if the initial Old Mill SL printing
mirrored the Hindu and brown Old Mills and were lacking the same 14 subjects.
You don't happen to have a list of the 29 Old Mill Sothern Leaguers from that
find do you?

Pat

I was thinking the same as you are; and, I have searched for my list of those 29 - OLD Mill Southern Leaguer's. But, so far have been unable to find it.

I will keep on searching.


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

Good information thanks for sharing. Always like hearing more about the Southern Leagues!

Pat

The following is an excerpt from the Net54 thread (Aug 2006) that I posted in which I reported of my 400+ T206 find..... http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=82314

" A month ago I was fortunate enough to acquire a 446 card T206 collection......409
cards are Piedmont 150/350....5 are P460-only....and 26 are Southern Leaguers
with OLD MILL backs. It was the original collection of the seller's Grandfather; who
grew up in South Carolina (and apparently his father strictly enjoyed Piedmont Cigs).
Also, there are 6 Sweet Cap 350/460 Fac. 42 cards. Some cards are Vg/Ex, but most
are Ex.....a well preserved collection with many HOFers. "

At that time, I was deeply involved in completing my all-PIEDMONT set and I think I failed to record the 26 (corrected) OLD MILL Southern Leaguer (SL) cards. As I cannot find any
information regarding them. Although, I do recall this SL group included Breitenstein, Shaughnessy, Foster, and Revelle.


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

Thanks for checking Ted. It would have been nice to know the 26 OM SL players since they all came from an original South Carolina collection.

I think it's interesting that the 1909 Eli Witt ad specifies "players of the Southern and South Atlantic Leagues".

There have been a few posts in the past about the number of different
Old Mill ads from 1910 but I didn't realize how many different ads
there actually were and what's interesting is the difference in the Old Mill
ads in Texas papers compared to the Old Mill ads from all the other states.

All of the Ads in the Texas papers state there are Texas League players
in each package while the ads in all other papers from NC, SC, VA, ect...
only mention that they contain baseball pictures.

I'm still going through all the ads and when I finish I will post them.
What I found interesting is that most of the Texas ads use the same
picture as the ads in other states but the wording is different and
includes the statement of the Texas League players.

Most of the ads from the non Texas states I've checked so far ran in the
spring of 1910 while the Texas ads ran in the late fall but these two
that used the same picture ran a month apart.

Attachment 331023
Attachment 331024

I feel like a jackass after my last post about the Old Mill ads. I visit
and use t206resource all the time and I've visited the advertisement
section several times but until last night I never noticed the galleries for the
Sporting Life, Hindu, Old Mill and Piedmont ads.

The Old mill gallery has 26 different ads.
http://t206resource.com/Old%20Mill%20Ad%20Gallery.html

Jim and Tim did a great job on the ads and I would like to
add some new information to theirs.

All 26 of the ads have a matching ad that was printed in Texas newspapers
with the exact picture but different wording and all the Texas paper ads
state that the packs contain Texas League baseball pictures

All the Texas Ads are on the right
Attachment 331067
Attachment 331068
Attachment 331069
Attachment 331070
Attachment 331071
Attachment 331072
Attachment 331074

The earliest Texas ad I found appeared in the Austin Statesman on Sept. 7 1910 the first non Texas ad appeared in a District of Columbia and Virginia
newspaper on March 1 1910. The last Texas ad appeared in the El Paso Herald on Dec 9 1910 and the last non Texas ad was in a Henderson NC paper on
Sept. 29 1910.

After the Dec. 9 I didn't find any Old Mill ads until this one
that appeared in the Galvelston daily news on Feb 14 1911
that made no mention of baseball pictures.
Attachment 331075

The early Old Mill Ad and the old Mill ads in the Texas papers support what
Scot Reader wrote about the Southern Leaguer's in his inside T206 publication.

Here what Scot wrote in his publication

Attachment 331214
Attachment 331215
Attachment 331216

The August 14 1909 ad only mentions Southern and South Atlantic
League players.
Attachment 331217

While The Old Mill ads that the Texas papers ran from September 7 1910
to December 9 1910 only mention Texas League players.
Attachment 331218

So these ads do support the fact that the Texas League players probably were
printed separately from the other 42 Southern League players.

Nice work, Pat.

Hi Pat,

Very interesting. We of course have known for a while that 34 of the 48 SLers were printed with Brown Hindu, and that none of the six Texas Leaguers were among the 34. The August 1909 Old Mill ad you found suggests that printing of these 34 with both Brown Hindu and Old Mill Southern started sometime in the late summer of 1909, whereas it had been previously thought that Old Mill Southern printing of all 48 SLers started at a later time—perhaps early 1910. In my view, this finding also reinforces the importance of the number 34 in T206 printing. Nice work.

Scot

Bumping this thread because I found another Old Mill ad/newspaper clip to go along with the first ad I found and I think it adds credence to the pages in the ATC Ledger.

Here's the Ad From a July 30th 1909 Charlotte NC newspaper

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric..._30__1909_.jpg[/IMG]

These dates line up perfectly with an Old Mill page in the ATC ledger.

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...ger%20page.jpg[/IMG]

The top of the page is missing but I was pretty sure it was about the Southern League players and now I think we can say it is for certain because it lines up perfectly with the Old Mill Ad and newspaper clip.

We now know that they packed and shipped the Old Mills with the Southern League subjects on August 7 1909 but we can't be sure when they started printing them but it was probably in June or July 1909.

Below that it says began packing Nat'l player like those in Piedmonts packing Jan 8 1910 shipping Jan 9 1910 so the printing for the Old Mill Major League subjects probably started in November or December 1909.

and under that it states began one Nat'l and 1 Southern League picture
began packing 3/15/1910 shipping 3/17/1910
I think this is when they switched over and the group 1 150/350 subjects with the Piedmont 350 backs were inserted in the packs. If that's the case then the
printing of the Group 1 subjects with Piedmont 350 backs probably began in January or February 1910.

It also states that they discontinued packing the Old Mills on 12-10-1910 so that must be when the packing of the 460 only Old Mill major League subjects ended.
This is probably when they started packing the T210's.