For anyone who has most of the white border tobacco cards, especially if they have not been slabbed, it is quite interesting to lay the cards out on a table. Cards from one team are enough. The Giants or the Cubs work best, there are lots of them.
Arrange the cards alphabetically, but left to right. But lay them out in several rows. Top row for 150 series cards. Middle row for 350s, at the bottom goes the 460s. You might need to have a 4th row in there for assorted's. Then, you can see the progression of the designs, you can see a subjects who had cards in every row (Tinker and McGraw come to mind), and you can see when a player is only in series 150, or only in series 460.
What can be seen is that the cards were issued in similar patterns. For Chicago, the cards with Cubs across the jersey were first, cards with Chicago down the front were last. For the Giants, those sweaters bunch together.
Sorting this way, then opening one's eyes, in an education in itself.
A generation and a half ago, collectors sorted these cards by team, not alphabetically. The number list did not exist. From there appearance, and for many years, these cards were always sorted by team. We lost this with the advent of the set's numbering. We lost seeing the similarity of the cards in the various series.
The visual impact of all of those sweaters next to one another is diminished if the cards are in slabs. They look impressive side by side.
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