Ruth- unopened cigs???
 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HomeRun-full...item3cd04194a0

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/HomeRun-full-...0t!~~60_57.JPG

You outed a current auction?? :(

I have seen a few of those packs for sale recently. Hopefully Jon C will come on and offer his valued opinion. I had seen these weeks ago and dismissed them as cinderella packs. (in other words not period and not valuable). Just a guess on my part. Hopefully I am wrong. They look neat.

and a quick Google search turned this up..

Dating started at 1932 with series 102, and went up to 1955 with the 1" series 125.
From 1956-59, the 3/4" series 125 DeWitt Clinton tax stamp was used.

Sorry-- i just thought it might been fake or not of the era. Was actually searching for something else and came across it.

Well, you were correct. It is not from the correct era. It looks to be from the 1950s.....based on the stamp.

Hard for me to see this as a 1950s thing, or much before 2013 for that matter. Just my opinion, but I'd be afraid, very afraid...

Interesting. No pictures of the side panels. I have seen these with addresses on the side that contain a zip code, which of course means that they would be mid 1960s at the earliest. Could this be earlier?

I've seen these Home Run Packs in the past, just not with Ruth on the side. I don't think they are vintage, probably 1960's, 70's. Only my opinion, could be wrong.

Joe

My guess is its a fake. There is a copyright date (photo below) on the bottom of the package that appears to be 1918. Babe Ruth wasn't really known to be a home run hitter until the early '20s, right? So, I can't see a pack of "Home Run" cigarettes dated 1918 with Ruth's image when at that time he wasn't really a home run hitter. Anyway, JMO.

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/HomeRun-full-...0_57.JPG?rt=nc

The "BABE RUTH'S WINNING CIGARETTE" font does not look vintage to me at all.

Agree with everyone above. My guess would be 1970s.

I think David makes a great point. While Ruth is in retrospect considered a great home run hitter, he wasn't yet in 1918. That pack had to be created later than the date on the stamp.

I'll leave it to the pack experts to decide this, and I'm not beginning to hint that the pack is real or period--I have no clue. Still, I would point out that Babe Ruth tied for the MLB lead in HRs in 1918; moreover, in 1919 he had more than twice as many HRs than anyone else in the AL and more than three times as anyone in the NL. If you were to feature a HR hitter in that time frame, who else would you have selected? And why, if your intent was to create a convincing fake, would you even create a dating problem as suggested when you could use a Yankee photo and mark it with a copyright date a few years later, when he was blasting 40+ HR pretty much every year?