The various Tobacco Factory's and their associated T206 T-brand's

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by Pat R

Based on previous discussions here I think most people agree that t206's were not printed at the cigarette factories.

Yes, most T206 guys realize this now. Although, very recently a Net54 poster posted to the contrary.

Early 2005, when I first checked out this forum, very few had even heard of American Lithographic (ALC); and, their impact on all these Tobacco cards.
Brian Weisner, Scot Reader, and I were the first to inform everyone on this forum of ALC. You can use the Net54 Search function to read all about it.

Originally Posted by Pat R

My question is, with numbers in the hundreds of millions of t206's printed in a time frame from around may 1909 to sometime in 1911 and ALC
owning several large printing facilities during this time how can we be certain that all of the t206's were printed at their NYC facility.

I did NOT say...."hundreds of millions of t206's".

I said......"The Richmond, VA plant produced many 100's of Millions of cigarettes.".

I would estimate that 10 - 20 Million T206's were printed between Spring/Summer 1909 thru to the Spring of 1911. I base this figure on my (and other's) estimate
that approx. 2 Million T206's are currently in circulation.

OK, let's consider this hypothetical 20 Million number of T206's printed over a period of 2 years.

Approx. 10 Million cards per year divided by 333 working days/year (3 round the clock shifts) = 10,000 cards per day.

My research indicates that T206's essentially were printed on sheets of 100 cards. If true, then that results in 100 such sheets per day. Is this an ambitious estimate ?
Perhaps so, but it certainly was work-able.

I would bet that the NYC firm of American Lithographic was the sole facility that produced all the T206 cards during that 2-year period. What some fail to realize is that
these cardboard gems we love so much were just a relatively small part of ALC's lithographic operation.


Sorry about this lengthy post, but I'll close by noting that there are 52 subjects representing the New York Giants in the T206 set. This amount is far greater than any
other BB team's representation in the T206 set.
In my opinion, this tells us a lot about this New York based Lithographic firm....and, where these cards were printed.


TED Z
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