C46 Imperial Tobacco

[Vintagecatcher]

Ted and Classic Auctions thanks for your responses.

The more that I have looked at early tobacco issues in an attempt to determine if it's possible to find out if Imperial Tobacco produced the C46 set, I have realized that the problem is much more complicated.

Here's the conundrum.

Asking the question, what was the purpose of tobacco cards?

The simple answer is that they served the functional purpose of protecting the cigarettes as a stiffener. More importantly, the cigarette manufacturers soon realized that if they used pictures of popular culture such: as athletes, actors, actresses, celebrities, animals, birds etc., they had a wonderful marketing opportunity. People would chase after these tobacco cards and the tobacco sales would increase dramatically.

So who benefited from this marketing strategy?

The easy answer, of course, is the cigarette manufacturers.

But they were not the only ones benefiting from the creation of tobacco cards. The actual creators of the cards, the lithograph companies themselves, also benefited greatly.

So some savvy cigarette manufacturers inserted tobacco cards in their products clearly identifying their product line. I'm also sure that the lithograph companies also produced cards without specific branding listed so they could reach a broader market.

So if this is true, American Lithographic Company may have created the C46 cards for the Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada. The only way to know for sure would be a paper trail detailing the promotion such as a newspaper ad or perhaps a contract between American Lithographic Company detailing the production of the tobacco cards for Imperial Tobacco or lastly an unopened Imperial Tobacco pack containing a C46 card.

There is little doubt that the American Lithographic Company most likely produced sets both here in the States as well as in Canada. The striking similarity between the design on the fronts of sets like the Minor League cards of the T205 set, the T80 Military Series, the T42 Bird Series, and Canadian bird series issues such as C14 and C45 leaves little doubt.

Although knowing exactly which products a specific tobacco card may have been packaged in may be lost to time, there is another indicator that at least helps with regards to card distribution.

Tobacco cards distributed in the US will exhibit the factory and district numbers, whereas, this info does not appear on any cards distributed in Canada.

C46s were no doubt distributed in Canada....but whether they were in packs of Imperial Tobacco remains to be seen.

Patrick