Posted By:
AnonymousThe card Factory/no. and the pack Factory/no. do match-up.
From the original auction description: "This is an original pack of Piedmont cigarettes (Factory 25, Dist. VA.) dating from the era of T206 tobacco cards!"
And the T206 Armbruster also indicates Fact. 25 VA.
So, the possibility remains that this card was lying around at the factory for many years after production, and even during production (because it is a 350 series card), and inserted in the pack at the factory in (or post) 1917. Whether that is what actually happened, is another story. But there is no factory mismatch that would, in my opinion, have made this card/pack combo impossible.
Would a scammer have known enough to insert a card with the same Factory as the pack? (Of course, the odds are not bad that this would have been done correctly by chance.) And if so, wouldn't the scammer have known to insert a 460 series card, since that is the latest series in the T206 run? To me, this adds to the possibility that some leftover 350 series cards got inserted at a later date. Again, it's only a possibility.
And yes, the Topps "Christmas rack packs" mentioned above with 1950s cards were originally packaged and distributed after the years of issue (exactly when they first appeared in stores, I can't recall). A bunch of these unopened rack packs were sold on eBay a couple of years ago, but the cards inside were not mint. My understanding was that these Christmas rack packs were not packaged and sold by Topps, but by a third party that purchased lesser quality Topps overstock. So, I'm not sure we can point to those rack packs as being an example of the manufacturer distributing cards later, since Topps didn't do the distribution. But certainly 1952 cards appearing in 1953 packs would be consistent with what we (might) be seeing here with the T206 Armbruster.