[canjond]

Apologies for not posting this in the "tobacco pack" thread, but I wanted to share a very exciting discovery with the Board. As many of you know, I have been collecting baseball related cigarette packs for 25+ years now. Although my collection is pretty advanced, there are still a handful of packs I've never come across, so it makes adding to my collection incredibly difficult. I'm at the point now that the 10-15 remaining packs I need are either unknown, or there is only a handful of copies that exist, and those reside in collections of old-timers or the whereabouts of the packs have been lost to time. The pack below is one such example.

To say that T231 Fan cigarettes cards are rare is an understatement. In fact, to date, only 3 examples of the cards have ever surfaced, Frank Baker, Larry Gardner and Carson Bigbee. What's incredible, however, is that about 15 years ago while doing research on the brand, I came across an old black and white photocopy of a Fans cigarette pack. It had appeared on the front cover of a cigarette newsletter in 1984. In an effort to track the box down, I contacted the publisher of the newsletter, many advanced cigarette pack collectors, and literally anyone else I could think of, but to no avail - no one had ever seen the pack beyond the newsletter, or knew what had happened to the gentleman's collection that was featured. I've been on the lookout for the pack ever since, and until recently, had resided myself to the real possibility that I'd never find it.

Fast forward to last week. Out of the blue, I received a letter in the mail (not email!) from a gentleman who ended up with the pack 40+ years ago. After some negotiation, we arrived at a price (a very steep price!), but the pack is now mine. The inner slide is missing, but the condition is incredible. So, for the first time, here is a picture of a T231 Fans cigarette box. I hope others can appreciate the pack as much as I do.