Old Judge vs T206 In their own eras
 

Which of these two sets made the most impact/had the largest success at the time of their release? My own personal (uneducated) guess would be the T206 due to the fact that cigarette smoking was more popular during their run than it was when the N172 was being placed in packages and also based on the sheer number of surviving T206 cards today.
Anyone have any anecdotes or cold hard facts?

It seems as though you would almost have to go back in time to know the answer. It's an interesting question. I might give more of an opinion later. :)

I remember reading somewhere that millions of T206 cards were swept up every night and thrown away when bars closed. I found this article that I remember reading as well. http://www.t206baseball.com/articles...-survive-today

Both sets were very popular when they were first released, especially with kids, though it's hard to quantify exactly how popular. This 1929 article that I posted last year is the most extensive first-person account I know of by somebody who collected Old Judges (along with all kinds of other tobacco cards) as a kid:

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=202129

Also, one old-time collector wrote an item for Card Collector's Bulletin in the early 1940s about how he had want lists as a kid in 1890. See also the first article at the following link, about the 1939 U.S. Card Collector's Catalog, in which Jefferson Burdick wrote: "Many old collectors remember the hey-days of 1890 and 1910 when collecting cigarette cards was an almost universal pastime. Prices in those days sometimes soared to 50c and $1.00 for a single badly wanted card. It was something like an auction sale where bidders in their eageness go to fantastic heights and the article is sold at many times its actual value."

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=228520

A fair amount of research has been done on the original reception of T206. Scot Reader's "Inside T206", available at the following link:

http://t206resource.com/Images/Publi...al-edition.pdf

has an account on pages 15-18 of the launch of T206 and the frenzy that followed, based on contemporary newspaper accounts. Here is the key passage from an article in the August 9, 1909 Charlotte Observer:

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...23.34%20PM.png
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...23.57%20PM.png

Part of the difference in population would come from the amount of time between the printing of the two sets, plus the fact the U.S. had a population of 62 million in 1890 and 92 million in 1910. Much larger base for collectors.

Since Old Judge cards were popular in 1889, it's possible large amounts were lost in the Johnstown Flood, which leveled 1600 houses and likely some business that sold Old Judge cigarettes. Being right in the middle of the baseball season and baseball being so popular in Pennsylvania, I wouldn't doubt the flood did something to the OJ population.

Attrition definitely took it's toll on old baseball cards. I've heard people guess that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires could be part of the reason that California League OJ cards are nearly impossible to find.

Basically, attrition makes it tough to gauge how popular cards are based on what remains 130 years later. The difference in U.S. population also makes it hard to compare those two sets.