T206 - Back Run Production Numbers?

[Rhotchkiss]

Read Scot Reader’s T206 paper/article. It is (in my opinion) the most comprehensive treatise on t206, including lots of info on back scarcity

https://www.oldcardboard.com/t/t206/...al-edition.pdf

[FrankWakefield]

Lonnie, I'm smiling... I'm glad to see that someone else uses searching techniques similar to my own. I wonder who hid it in the Backs tab.

And +1 about Scot Reader's material. Scot's work is a great resource.

[The Nasty Nati]

I think it will be impossible to find production numbers for the cards, but what may be possible is to find records of ATC tobacco sales by brand. If that ever existed, we could theoretically see which is truly rarer, Uzit or Drum, based on the volume of cigarette sales between the two brands.

That being said, I have no idea where to find that information or if it does exist - but it could be a fun project for someone.

[Cory]

A nice little table from PSA on backs by percentage -

https://www.psacard.com/articles/art...ifferent-backs

Sorry for the link - I tried to upload the pic with no luck.

[Leon]

+1. A must read for T206 guys and girls.

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Read Scot Reader’s T206 paper/article. It is (in my opinion) the most comprehensive treatise on t206, including lots of info on back scarcity

https://www.oldcardboard.com/t/t206/...al-edition.pdf

[The Nasty Nati]

But none of those excellent sources talk about actual cigarette sales data. I’m wondering if there is some old ATC ledger somewhere that exists that states the sales volume numbers of Drum and Uzit from 1911. Highly doubtful it exists. But that would be quite the research find.

[G1911]

We have some production numbers for some brands, from the journals of the period and the breakup legal cases. Packs produced in a year does not equal cards though; the ledgers and records indicate relatively short pack-issue periods for a particular set of cards and many packs appear to have had no cards even for brands that were among the frequent issuers of the cards.

Most estimates seem off base to me because they are almost all ignoring the non-baseball cards and/or the lack of cards at all for certain periods.