Drum tobacco

[Archive]

Posted By: Jon Canfield

Absolutely did not come in the Drum pouches. Why advertise "Drum Cigarettes" on the back of the cards if you are not going to package your cards in the cigarettes? The fact that there are currently no known 1910 era Drum cigarette packs should not be a determining factor. Drum was a small brand without the widespread distribution that Sweet Caporal, Piedmont, etc enjoyed. It is not unfathomable that no cigarette boxes have surfaced to date. To add more credence to the my statement that Drum did not package cards in the tobacco pouches, ATC's own records from the era show that the pouches were not even manufactured or distributed during the time period consistent with the Drum backed T206's, while Drum cigarette packs were.

There are also no known Hindu cigarette boxes, no known Kotton, no known Red Sun, etc. In fact, until this year, there were no known Fan cigarette boxes, and now an image of one has surfaced. New discoveries are made all the time, so the fact that we do not yet have a Drum cigarette back really means nothing. In fact, if there is one correlation between the number of surviving cards and the numbering of surviving cigarette/tobacco packs that correspond to the cards, its that the most common backs are the most common cigarette packs. The rarer the back, the rarer the cigarette pack to locate. Why? Because less were made, sold and saved for 100 years.

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