[Archive]

Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

If 10% (a (very) conservative guess) of the population smoked cigarettes around 1910, that equates to about 10 million smokers. If 300,000,000 cards were produced, that's about 30 cards per smoker. The cards were produced over a 2-year-plus period, so that equates to less than 15 cards per year per smoker. Given that there was at least one card per pack and that the average smoker probably went though 15 packs in less than one month, each smoker probably accumulated 15 cards per month. So even taking into account that cards may not have been inserted into packs in the off season and that subjects other than baseball might be in the packs, this analysis still suggests the 300,000,000 figure to be not only realistic but maybe even conservative.