T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[G1911]

It's a good thing you smart gents are here, because I was looking for a "Brett Little" as an employee of ALC or ATC like a dumbass, though it seems obvious now...

Until a year ago, my suspicion had been that American Lithographic did pretty much all the 1909-1912 American Tobacco cards, which I think was the normal opinion. I thought they had a more active role than is generally imagined, as it seems they were the ones securing athletes rights (inferred from the Ball letter), and not ATC, seeming like more than the role of a printer contracted to do a job. The ATC ledger doesn't have anything on indentifying the printer unless my memory is awry. This ledger from Lelands last year would suggest whoever Old Masters is and Brett Lithographic worked in partnership to produce some of the sets, at least.

The "prize fighters" referenced printed at Brett until they "burnt out" and then started at Old Masters must be T225-1, not T220 (the dates are before T220-1 or T220-2 is possible, because Gans date of death appears in the cards. Thus they can't have been done before mid-August, 1910 at the earliest). I thought t225 (and T28, T96) were not done by ATC/AL, and the Oxford/Surbrug/Khedieval brands weren't part of the ATC umbrella. Am I wrong there?

So there's multiple printers working in partnership (the 'burnt out' pass-off reference would seem to tell us this) to print ATC sets, even within the same set. My first thought is that this is because American Lithography dominated the New York printing business at this time. I have not succeeded in finding reference to Old Masters or Brett Litho as subsidiaries though; Pat's linked article even includes the transaction history of Brett without reference to them ever being an American Lithography subsidiary. This wasn't entirely uncommon then though; with the Monopoly laws being fairly fresh and enforced there were plenty of somewhat secret subsidiaries in a host of areas. If Old Masters and Brett Litho were not subsidiaries, they could be sub-contractors OR the entire picture is much more complicated and Lithograph companies were competing for orders and business from American Tobacco, and the long-standing view of the ATC/AL partnership is just wrong.

[G1911]

Starting with the E229's, as there are only 6 panels and it's easier. Actually, I should probably not call them E229. This could be the bread version (D353, I think), I believe there's no way to tell which series a card goes too if there is a blank back like these have. I'd love to know if there is, if we have a collector more knowledgeable of them, I don't know this set very well. Panel numbers are following the random order I put them in in post 11.

Panel 2 (Gilbert/Gilbert) is apparently the bottom left corner.

I believe Panel 3 (Gilbert/Flanagan) goes above it, the cut is a close match and the alignment mark seems to have it's bottom present on panel 2. 95% sure.

Fitting next to panel 3's right is panel 5 (Gilbert/Flanagan again). The edge is not as neatly cut as many of them are and it fits together perfectly, positive this connects.

The other 3 panels do not connect to any of this grouping. Panel 1 (Eller/Erickson) may fit right above panel 4 (Erickson/Irons), but the top and bottom edges are pretty cleanly cut and without all the panels here it's hard to be sure this one is 100% correct.

Panel 6 (Flanagan/Eller) does not fit with any of the other panels.

[G1911]

Using the edge pieces, because again, they are easier . I can fit 3 along the top edge. I'm using the cut, little marks in the borders, and little creases or abrasions some have to match a fit, as well as the wear marks in the white edges.

Frayne > Burke > Jordan fit together, with Jordan obviously being the top right corner.

Of the right edge panels, I only have one, Gans. Moore went to the other buyer, the seller yanked Dempsey. Gans does not fit beneath the Jordan.

There are no left edge panels.

On the bottom row, I can solidly put Edwards and McGovern together. there is brown on the tape on the back connecting them, but ignoring this the creasing and wear and cut fit perfectly. I am 99% sure we can put carney to the left of Edwards. My Edwards panel has a crease going off the edge below his knee. This lines up with a crease on the carney, and the damage in the white also lines up. I do not have Carney in hand (another pulled auction), but pretty sure he fits in right here based on the scans and damage locations.

So that's a significant stretch of the top and bottom rows. It seems to me to strongly suggest these were not pass around sheets like the T62 shown earlier. It must be a fairly large sheet or two. I'm hoping I can now piece internal panels together and with border panels, and then compare what I produce with the e229's and check if they fit together.

[G1911]

Getting somewhere.

1) Edwards is obviously a bottom panel, with the big white margin.

2) On top of Edwards is 100% Donovan of ToDay. There is a light crease on back that fits perfectly between the two, and the cut matches.

3) On top of Donovan is Lavigne. Lavigne has a tiny brown mark on back that fits with a very hard to see mark on the Donovan, and the cut again matches.

4) On top of Lavigne is Jackson. Lavigne has a rip, and an old brown tape on the back to cover it up. The tip of the tape stretches onto the Jackson panel. The cut also lines up perfect.

5) On top of Jackson is Frayne, I think. the cuts fit perfect; there's a slight dip on the second Jackson card at top row that aligns with an extension on the Frayne as well in that spot.

6) I’m pretty sure this puts together a complete column, but again the caveat that without them all in hand to ensure each fit is the best fit, I can't be 100% certain.

7) Now, Goldman fits next to Donovan and above McGovern. He fits well with Donovan on the cut. He is 100% above McGovern, there is a crease that aligns and several subtle shifts in color in the tan that lines up perfectly with Terrible Terry. This leaves three unplaced panels I have in hand: Corbett, Wilson, Driscoll.

8) None of these 3 panels fit beneath Burke. The Jordan column has an unknown bottom corner card, and Gans/Dempsey/Moore beneath Jordan, in some unknown order. It's not Gans right beneath Jordan. I believe Moore must be beneath Jordan, even without it in hand. There is a crease in the bottom right of Jordan that lines up perfect with a crease in the Moore panel.

9) Beneath Moore, goes my Gans sheet. Gans has several creases in the top of the first card running upwards. This matches some creases on the bottom of the Moore panel, 1st card second row.

10) This means Dempsey logically must be beneath Gans, if my column of 5 is correct. no creases to prove it, but the cuts visually match. The top left of the Dempsey swoops up a bit, matching a dip in the cut of the Gans. I wouldn't call that proof enough, but it logically has to be here anyways, so I am satisfied this placement is very likely. This means Dempsey is also to the right of Goldman. I see no tell tale evidence for or against this in the edges of the two panels.

11) Now I have to break from what is placed. Beecher goes above Wilson, though Beecher is one I do not own. Wilson has a large swoop up in his top border, starting at card 1 and arching into card 2. Beecher matches at the bottom, with that swoop resulting in his name being pretty close to the edge. It follows the arch perfectly.

12) So there's 2 more. Beecher/Wilson don't seem to fit in the gap between Burke and Goldman, nor does it seem to slow right above Carney. That rip in Lavigne should also be visible on the card adjacent to him, 2 above Carney. It's not on any surviving cards. That the rip was strengthened with tape before the sheet was cut (or at least, before Jackson was cut off from Lavigne) strongly suggests to me that this is the case. The card to Lavigne's left should also have some of this tape, as it sharply cut off.

13) I think Corbett fits to Jackson's left; it's a close cut, but no matching marks to aid me. I would not peg this one at positive, but probable.

14) I am pretty confident that Driscoll is to Corbett's left, which puts us at least 5 panels across now, if so. The cut here fits very, very well. I'm pretty sure here, but lacking identifying marks.

15) Wilson fits well next to Gans. He does NOT fit well above Golddman or next to Lavigne though, which would also have to be true if he was next to Gans. This would put Beecher below Burke, but the crease in Beecher doesn’t seem to fit with Burke. That corner crease could have come post-cutting of course, but so far my lesson has been that damage occurred before the sheet was cut. I don’t have Beecher in hand to test the fit.

16) Beecher/Wilson might go here, or somewhere else on the left side of the sheet. I don’t know.

17) I suspect the Driscoll Glover represents the left edge and that the white margin on the left was trimmed off before sheet cutting, or there is a 6th row that would have to make some repeat panels at this point. Beecher's crease doesn't line up with him, hard to tell. That would mean Wilson to Donovan's left and above Carney. He's not quite a perfect fit with Donovan, but close. I don't have Carney to do close comparison work with.

18) So that’s 15 panels placed together, with 2 more placed together apart from the rest (Beecher/Wilson) and McCoy unplaceable because I don’t have him in hand and the image doesn’t give enough clues. The presumed other panels now must surely have existed to fill the slots.

19) 5 panels in a column makes sense from a checklist perspective. 5x5 makes a lot of sense for a 25 card series; as this was clearly intended to be. Cards measure ~2.5' x 3 5/16. 10 cards in a column, 5 unique, would be a hair over 31 inches tall without the white margins. 5 panels wide, 20 cards in a row, would produce 50 inches. It seems this sheet is 5 panels wide, or more. Pretty clearly 5 tall, I think.

20) I am now positive this was not a pass round prototype sheet like the T62. it is clearly not quite final production though, several changes were made. Beecher was corrected as noted earlier. I suspect the uneven borders on Jordan (especially) and Carney were too. I would suspect the silver layer was applied over some of the white margins; otherwise any card from the top row centered down would be found without silver at its top edge. This is not the case, so it must have been more liberally applied.

21) This seems to kill my old theories about Donovan being on an edge with James J. Corbett filling the columns above/below him, and his yanking leading to Corbett’s yanking for production ease.

22) Though not quite final production, I think it more likely than not that this is what a final production layout would be. It’s not a pass around, and re-doing it would be seemingly pointless. No sheet layout (even 2 or 3 sheets with only one total slot for each of them doesn’t account for it) can adequately account for Donovan and Corbett’s SP’ing, they deductively had to have been pulled.

23) If they were pulled, which seems the only reasonable explanation, something else probably went in the slot. Or, they manually removed and separated the cards in this slot to avoid DP’ing a card and redoing the sheet. 23 cards doesn’t come out even almost no matter what you do.

24) I cannot fit any of the E229 panels with the T220-1 panels.

25) In my photo I have used standard cards to represent sheets I do not have in hand, I don’t own enough Dempsey’s to do it quite right. Wilson/Beecher aren’t placeable with the rest yet, and so are off by themselves; they aren’t necessarily over somewhere below Driscoll, I just don’t have enough space on my table. Net54 hates quality pics and caps me at like 80kb, so this may look like crap after it slaughters the quality but I hope the idea comes through:

[Pat R]

That's a large sheet 34-36 inches x 50-52 inches ?

[Exhibitman]

If they were pulled for some reason it could explain why there are some, but only a handful, in the wild. Like the 1948 Leaf Graziano, which was pulled but definitely had some go to market in packs.

[G1911]

That's how my math is coming out on the sheet size, Pat. And it assumes that that the left edge was just cut off and that Driscoll represents the furthest left row, otherwise it is even wider. Driscoll's left edge is definitely handcut. It's certainly a deductive leap to assign it as the left edge. I thought there was a significant chance this was more than one sheet, but I'm much more strongly believing it is indeed a 5x5 array at this point as the likeliest size. I would have thought there were less than 200 cards a sheet before this find.


I'm not surprised if they were split between factories. This reference here may be something out of the norm, a set switching location because of a literal fire burning out a plant might have produced uncommon behavior for a time, if it is not metaphor for a facility being overworked and unable to meet quota. it would seem to suggest some very close business relationship between Old Masters and Brett Litho at the least. I would not be surprised at all if T206, the biggest set and possibly the one produced over the longest time, was at multiple locations. This would certainly seem to increase the likelihood that this was the case. I am surprised that this possibly was not an ATC/AL partnership at all, and they were just one of several contracted printers. The Ball Letter would suggest T206 was done by one company, at any number of locations, but one company. But I can find nothing that these other firms were part of American Lithographic. Makes some sense that they could have had quiet subsidiaries in the political context of 1910. This possibility throws a curveball if true. I can find almost nothing on "Old Masters" at all - or Fulgraff.


I've been buying T220-1 pretty heavily for a long time. I don't believe there is a double printing situation going on with what I've seen over the years, where Donovan and Corbett were pulled and another panel substituted in their place and thus being roughly twice as common. The known Donovan's and Corbett's seem like issued cards. It makes sense to me it's just like the Graziano, cards pulled and not supposed to be issued, but of course if it's a manual removal process before shipment to factory 649 it's going to be imperfect. Such a manual process doesn't seem out of place in 1910. What still makes absolutely no sense to me is why? Perhaps with the Porter lawsuit, they were more careful about getting signed contracts in place and Donovan and Corbett hadn't yet signed, but did before the T220-2 issue. there are reasonable explanations for why they might be pulled. I can think of none for why Donovan had like 1/3 of the card art redone, the background beyond the stands is completely different between the two parts of the T220 issue. If a plate broke, you wouldn't redo the painting it was based on and then redo a plate. If the painting was somehow lost or damaged and you had to redo the image, there would be differences, perhaps subtle but clearly different, in the other 2/3 of the art. I can still think of no reasonable expiation at all for this element. Usually we have an abundance of ideas and a lack of evidence, but here I've got no idea even.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by G1911

It's a good thing you smart gents are here, because I was looking for a "Brett Little" as an employee of ALC or ATC like a dumbass, though it seems obvious now...

Until a year ago, my suspicion had been that American Lithographic did pretty much all the 1909-1912 American Tobacco cards, which I think was the normal opinion. I thought they had a more active role than is generally imagined, as it seems they were the ones securing athletes rights (inferred from the Ball letter), and not ATC, seeming like more than the role of a printer contracted to do a job. The ATC ledger doesn't have anything on indentifying the printer unless my memory is awry. This ledger from Lelands last year would suggest whoever Old Masters is and Brett Lithographic worked in partnership to produce some of the sets, at least.

The "prize fighters" referenced printed at Brett until they "burnt out" and then started at Old Masters must be T225-1, not T220 (the dates are before T220-1 or T220-2 is possible, because Gans date of death appears in the cards. Thus they can't have been done before mid-August, 1910 at the earliest). I thought t225 (and T28, T96) were not done by ATC/AL, and the Oxford/Surbrug/Khedieval brands weren't part of the ATC umbrella. Am I wrong there?

So there's multiple printers working in partnership (the 'burnt out' pass-off reference would seem to tell us this) to print ATC sets, even within the same set. My first thought is that this is because American Lithography dominated the New York printing business at this time. I have not succeeded in finding reference to Old Masters or Brett Litho as subsidiaries though; Pat's linked article even includes the transaction history of Brett without reference to them ever being an American Lithography subsidiary. This wasn't entirely uncommon then though; with the Monopoly laws being fairly fresh and enforced there were plenty of somewhat secret subsidiaries in a host of areas. If Old Masters and Brett Litho were not subsidiaries, they could be sub-contractors OR the entire picture is much more complicated and Lithograph companies were competing for orders and business from American Tobacco, and the long-standing view of the ATC/AL partnership is just wrong.

This is along the lines of what I have suggested as a possibility for a few years now about the t206's. It would be the answer to many question about the T206's if there were several facility's and/or firms involved in printing the t206's over the 2+ years they were distributed.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Pat R

[/B]

This is along the lines of what I have suggested as a possibility for a few years now about the t206's. It would be the answer to many question about the T206's if there were several facility's and/or firms involved in printing the t206's over the 2+ years they were distributed.

It sure would.

And the quantities shown in the ledger! It's possible the survival rate was way lower than thought, and unfortunately that Scot Rs possible production numbers are low by quite a bit.

Another possibility I need to eventually get to the local historical society to check on is the orange border candy boxes which share some images with T206
The company that printed those movd from Boston to here in Lowell, printed mostly novelty candy boxes including the orange borders, then promptly went out of business in 1910 or 1911.
I suspect an ALC connection there too, and I'm hoping the local history society has some info.