Hi Ted.
No kidding, Carolina Brights would probably rival Piedmont for commonness in T206 cards. It’s always possible that Carolina Brights was just as popular in 1910 as it had been in 1905, and that the reason CB backs are tough is because ATC just didn’t include T206s with them for that long a period of time. But I think if that were the case, we’d see as many empty Carolina Brights cigarette packs floating around as we see Piedmont ones, and we clearly do not. So I think CB must have faded somewhat by 1910.
The prevalence of Piedmont might actually support that. I suspect the two brands of cigarettes were actually very similar products. In doing some research, there’s evidence that in the early 1900s the ATC used Piedmont as their “fighting brand” against Carolina Brights to try to run Wells-Whitehead out of business. They sold Piedmonts at cut-rate prices and included coupon schemes to try to get smokers to switch from Carolina Brights. Later, of course, they just bought Wells-Whitehead out. By 1910, that section of the smoking public that liked North Carolina bright leaf tobacco cigarettes might have moved on from Carolina Brights to Piedmont, or maybe slowly been pushed there by ATC.
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