Uncut Piedmont Cigarette Sheets

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Posted By: J Hull

I recently picked up two uncut sheets of Piedmont cigarette box packaging. They're on medium stock cardboard, identical to the type used for cigarette boxes. I've never seen any other sheets like these, and I'm curious whether anyone else has. Each measures approximately 17 x 33 inches. They're for Factory 240 in Pennsylvania, so they never would have been destined for T206s. And they're probably, as best I can tell, just slightly post 1911. I'm hoping someone may be able to more definitively pin down the possible timeframe. The labels are Liggett & Myers, which makes them post 1911 (I think). I'm also under the impression that late in the teens, they increased the package size from 10 to 12 cigarettes. Which if that's true would date these sheets to the early to mid teens. But I could be completely wrong.

It's kind of tough to get a good picture of them, but if folks are interested I can try to do a little better. One thing of note on the sheets is that the registration is off for both, and so maybe they were yanked from being used as boxes for that reason. Then again, with all the registration marks all over the place, maybe they were from a morning test run when the press was being set up. Anyway, I think they're pretty cool.

Jamie

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I've never seen a Piedmont sheet like that before. Quite impressive. There are old tobacco proofs and sheets for cigar box labels and bands, so that sort of tobacco stuff exists. From more modern times, like the 1950s and 60s, you can find uncut proof sheets for Topps baseball and football wax boxes and bazooka boxes. Often times the Topps and Bazooka proofs are missing one or more color.

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Posted By: JimB

That is cool.
JimB

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Posted By: T E

Where did you come upon this one? Always love to hear the war stories...
Tom

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Posted By: Brian Weisner

Nice find!!! I would love to look at those up close. I'm headed to work, but will be back later. Thanks for sharing. Brian

PS I think your guess is pretty good late teens early 20's..

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Posted By: J Hull

Tom,
I found the two sheets listed on eBay. The seller was in central Maryland. He claimed to have found them in the floor of a house built around 1900 -- "under three layers of antique linoleum, on an old heart pine varnished floor." Given the other stuff he was and had been selling (a mishmash of, well, junk), he could have been telling the truth. Seems to make sense; the sheets are quite large but still have fairly sharp corners, and one sheet appears not to have been handled much at all.


Brian,
I'll try to get some better images up this evening.


Jamie

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Posted By: Joe D.

I love seeing stuff like that.

Great find!

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Posted By: Keith O'Leary

I've never seen one either (and I would have been looking ).

"It's kind of tough to get a good picture of them, but if folks are interested I can try to do a little better. One thing of note on the sheets is that the registration is off for both, and so maybe they were yanked from being used as boxes for that reason. Then again, with all the registration marks all over the place, maybe they were from a morning test run when the press was being set up. Anyway, I think they're pretty cool."

I think you're right on the mark here and its probably your registration guess. I think the colors would have been a little more off (either darker to get rid of excess ink on the press rollers before a production run, or lighter as pressman sometimes towards the end of the day would only tap a light amount of ink on the rollers just to get an image for registration adjustments without filling up the ink fountain and getting that dirty..made for an easier end of the day clean up).

I always thought these kind of sheets were neat looking when I was a printer. I thought it would be neat to take a bunch home and paper an entire room with them. I guess they'd make good flooring too LOL.

I like the piece a lot!

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Posted By: Joe D.

I am going to guess it was a bad plate.

Looks like the move needed to register the colors (down and to the left) on the "front" would screw up the back (where the blue type has just enough room right now fitting within the gold border.


Just a guess... but it is fun to speculate "why" with stuff like this.


edit to say: you were a printer? We've emailed many times... and I never knew.

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Posted By: J Hull

I've taken another good look at the sheets, and on the points in Keith's comments, the two sheets are slightly different. One sheet was run through the press twice, once for blue ink and once for gold ink. The other sheet though has one blue inking and two gold inkings – the two golds being identical but offset by a millimeter or so. And interestingly, the back of that same sheet has a run of the gold ink as well.

Back:


Both:



To avoid completely overwhelming this page, I’ve put a super big image at my homepage: www.jimonym.com.
It's several scans of almost a full sheet. They don't quite line up perfectly, but they're not bad.

Jamie