T205 and American Tobacco Company
 

Question for T205 experts. We know that T205 cards come in many different advertizement backs from American Beauty to Drum, Hindu and Sovereign and on. All sources say that American Tobacco Company issued T205 cards. With this being said, were all these different brands, are they all part of the American Tobacco Company and why are cards like Hindu and Drum rare in comparison to brands like Polar Bear?

Just like T206 (and big tobacco of today) tobacco corporations own many brands. My guess as to the large and small populations would be more and less popular brands. You see Piedmont and Sweet Caporal advertising pieces that have nothing to do with cards more than those other brands too.

Scott,

Guess that Hindu and Drum cigarettes must have been pretty bad as cigarettes go explaining the rarity of Drum and Hindu backs. LOL Wonder if regional release of certain brands might be part of the explanation of back rarity?

yeah popularity might not be the best way to put it. They may have been more "exclusive" brands too, a higher price point for the discriminating smoker as opposed to the more ubiquitous cheapo brands.

BTW just added a ton of T205's to BST :)

Also interesting that not all players were in each brand. I collect only T205 Cubs and Hindu has only 2 Cubs, Drum only 2 Cubs, and Broadleaf only 2 Cubs. I believe only Polar Bear and maybe Piedmont factory 25 have all 19 Cubs players. Wonder why?

Just do some searches here on the board. Ted Z, Josh, myself, and several others have written up several good articles about T205's.

here is a link to a good read

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=197200

here is one I wrote up a while back with a lot of info

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=214344

God article