T206 American Beauty cards

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Posted By: Ron Rice

As the owner of an unopened 1910 American Beauty 'soft pack' 15-count, I did some research after reading the posts. First of all, the 'soft pack' is not as soft as you might think. It is nearly as firm as 10-count hard packs I have, so I think its possible a thinner T206 could have been packaged with a soft pack, and the cards survived without creasing. I also have an 8-count Sweet Caporal soft pack dated 1910 (unopened) that seems wide enough to hold a T206.

In trolling the ATC documents on-line, I found a 1909 ATC price list catalog that shows ATC sold only 10 & 20-count packs. I believe Jon C is using this as part of the evidence of his theory. It makes sense that slide/shell packs are right for a card insert. However, no similar ATC price list exists for 1910-1911 so hard to say if anything changed. I found another source on the site that said 8-count and 15-count packs were introduced in 1910 after a tax increase. The smaller packs with higher tax could be sold at the same price. Although cigarette cards were only in slide/shell packs up to 1909, it is possible that things changed in 1910. Remember that some cards became 'soft cards', such as silks, leathers and tiny indian blankets. American Beauty had silk butterflies, I believe. So I think it is likely that thinner AB T206's were inserted after 1909. When the AB 350's were trimmed, the backs didn't line up well. So they went to the 'frameless' design. These are just theories, of course.