My Wagner for Your Parakeet? - slightly OT

[frankbmd]

Thoughts on the distribution of Tobacco cards, collecting practices and the culture of collecting in the Tobacco Card era

1. Pack wars - Did smokers in 1910 bet on the contents of Piedmont packs? The dealer sells two packs: the person with the pack containing the lesser valued card pays for both and the person with the higher valued card gets all the smokes & both cards.

2. Chase cards - Were cigarette display boxes distributed with one or two stars per box and if so, did dealers shuffle the contents of boxes once the Matty was pulled?

3. Fish & Game - If baseball cards were the big draw, what did the dealers do with all the fish and bird packs? Could they have thrown a few into the baseball card displays simply to move them off the shelves? Imagine the dismay of a baseball card collector and smoker when he opens a pack of Sweet Caporals and finds a sturgeon on the card.

4. Actresses & Birds - Were the non sport subjects a response to pressure from special interest groups such as the Screen Actors Guild or the Audubon Society? That could certainly happen today in our diverse PC world.

5. Unhealthy Collectors - With unnumbered cards and varying sizes of sets, did collectors of say the Tolstoi military uniform cards continue to smoke heavily trying to obtain yet another different card, after they already unknowingly had a complete set, and die of lung cancer trying?

6. Forget Topps & Bowman - Without the legal action that broke up the American Tobacco Company in 1911, would we still be collecting Tobacco cards today?

7. Gum on the Floor - Were there ardent collectors of baseball subjects who purchased unopened display boxes of cigarettes and then ripped opened all the packs, kept the cards and threw the cigarettes away?

8. Origin of Bullies - Were the fish and bird collectors the subject of ridicule by bullies in school?

9. Just the Smokes, Ma'am - What percentage of smokers in the day could care less about the subject on the card?

10. Worst card Trade Ever - Of the group defined in Question 9, do you think a smoker ever traded a Wagner for a parakeet, aka a Carolina Parrot?