Collecting vintage baseball cards has seen its ranks of collectors, dealers and flippers expand now that the sports collectibles industry has been in the Junk Wax 2.0 (or Junk Foil, Junk Grading) Era. There are countless vintage cards that collectors can buy from the 1800s and early 1900s. Tobacco era cards are incredibly attractive to buyers.

The calls have been stronger in recent years that high-end collectibles are now undeniably an alternative asset class. Many cards now cost over $10,000 and over $100,000… and some are over $1 million! And no, this is not suggesting every tobacco card is an investment like a stock or like bonds. Not every single card, high-end vintage or lower-end modern, will rise in value. Many cards, even vintage cards, will even drop in value over time.

This is a call to collectors rather than the investors and flippers in sports cards. Calling for all vintage card collectors to own tobacco cards (and tobacco era cards) obviously has its limits. There is the prized T206 white border set from the American Tobacco Company issued from 1909 to 1911. This set has the prized T206 Honus Wagner card, but there are many other tobacco cards that can be collected without a 7-figure price or anything close to it.

It could be a doctoral dissertation to review all of the tobacco cards and tobacco era cards in detail. That said, here is a pointer to show just how easy it is, and often without breaking the bank (some even under $100), to be able to buy cards from the dawn of baseball cards. There are many tobacco era cards (candy, food, trade cards and post cards) if you are staunchly against tobacco cards that did contribute to multiple generations getting addicted to cigarettes.

I was fortunate enough to buy more than 150 tobacco and tobacco era cards over the course of 2021 and 2022. Most of these will come up for sale here on the site or on social media @oggscards on Twitter and oggscards on Instagram in the coming weeks. And other tobacco and tobacco era cards of greats like Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Walter Johnson, Cap Anson, Cy Young and others might require an amputation for me to part with from my personal collection.

Who knows — maybe I will complete my book covering The First 50 Years of Baseball Cards one day. Feel free to reach out with ideas and comments. And you can sign up for the OggsCards email list as well for updates in the hobby and announcements about what’s coming up for sale.

Many Examples Beyond T206

I will get into just how many other alternatives there are before giving a heads up to The T206 set. Here are just some of the other sets with large populations that are tobacco and tobacco era baseball cards with their PSA graded populations displayed from early 2023:

• T201 Mecca Double Folders from 1911 (~12,300)
• T202 Hassan Triple Folder from 1912 (~11,700)
• T207 Brown Edges (~10,000)
• E90-1 American Caramel (~5,700)
• The N172 Old Judge from 1887 (~5,700)… and growing still!
• M116 Sporting Life from 1911 (7,000+)
• T205 Gold Border from 1911 (45,000+)
• Turkey Red Cabinets T3 & T9 from 1911 (7,000+)
• Cracker Jack from 1914 (5,200+)
• Cracker Jack from 1915 (14,000+)

The figures above are also only using the PSA population data to get to another 115,000 cards that have already been graded. There are also the ungraded cards from this era, and SGC and BVG (Beckett Vintage) all have their own populations to track down.

And let’s not forget the incredibly large T210 Old Mill baseball card set. This nearly endless set of 640 cards has 8 series of cards from different Southern regions covering 1910. Most of these players failed to make it to the big leagues, but there are some incredible cards in this red border set like the first Shoeless Joe Jackson card (now over $500,000 sales) the first Casey Stengel card (now nearing $50,000 in sales).

The T206 Set, The Monster

The T206 set is called The Monster in the sports collectibles hobby because it is so difficult to complete. Without considering the cost of Honus Wagner, Eddie Plank and the error cards, there are 524 cards and there are 16 different backs (cigarette brands) to pursue. Many players have multiple cards (4 for Ty Cobb alone!). Putting together a master collection would take years and countless dollars even in lower condition and low grades from PSA, SGC, BVG, CSG and others.

Without having to spend more than $1 million to own even the most mangled examples there are many stars and Hall of Famers that can be owned — Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie, Cy Young, Homerun Baker, Tris Speaker, Addie Joss, John McGraw, Walter Johnson and many others. Some can be purchased for under $1,000 if they are not in the Mega-Star category.

There are other great players, some Hall of Famers and some not — Vic Willis, Clark Griffith, Eddie Collins, Elmer Flick, Hal Chase, Chief Bender, Fred Merkle, Hugh Jennings, Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown, Roger Bresnahan, Rube Marquard, Sam Crawford, Rube Waddell, Willie Keeler, Zack Wheat and many more. And then there is the great Tinker to Evers Chance combo that collectors can pursue.

And there are countless cards from minor leaguers and Southern Leaguers all over the Eastern half of the nation that were issued for cities and towns which have no MLB teams today like Providence, San Antonio, Rochester, Buffalo, Columbus, Augusta, Memphis, Indianapolis, Montgomery, Nashville, Jersey City, Toledo, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Louisville, Macon, Waco and elsewhere.

Tobacco era cards have become much more expensive in recent years. Buying any in great shape is hard to do even for a common card under $100. But don’t fret if you are a first time buyer of tobacco era cards because there is a massive supply of these cards. The prized T206 set has over 265,000 graded examples already in its pop report that can be viewed. SGC’s T206 Master Pop Report also shows how many examples of each card have been graded over the last 20 years or so. The majority of these T206 cards will be Piedmont and Sweet Caporal backs, and some collectors go after the rare backs (at a huge cost premium) like Caroline Brights, American Beauty, Tolstoi, Broad Leaf and others.

Here is just a list of the major and more abundant HOF player counts from SGC’s graded examples of various poses and portraits and backs (listed as examples) and with Cobb listed twice:

• Bender, Chief (32 items, pop. 1,441)
• Bresnahan, Roger (21 items, pop. 1,155)
• Brown, Mordecai (36 items, pop. 1,472)
• Chance, Frank (44 items, pop. 1,828)
• Chase, Hal (69 items, pop. 2,480)
• Clarke, Fred (18 items, pop. 917)
• Cobb, Ty (40 items, pop. 2,658)
• Cobb, Ty (17 items, pop. 759)
• Crawford, Sam (24 items, pop. 844)
• Evers, Johnny (36 items, pop. 1,656)
• Griffith, Clark (29 items, pop. 1,071)
• Huggins, Miller (16 items, pop. 1,027)
• Jennings, Hughie (37 items, pop. 1,331)
• Johnson, Walter (25 items, pop. 1,436)
• Keeler, Willie (17 items, pop. 1,028)
• Lajoie, Nap (32 items, pop. 1,703)
• Marquard, Rube (31 items, pop. 14,64)
• Mathewson, Christy (38 items, pop. 2,347)
• McGraw, John (42 items, pop. 1,711)
• Speaker, Tris (10 items. pop. 748)
• Tinker, Joe (43 items, pop. 1,805)
• Young, Cy (37 items, pop. 2,010)

While the T206 cards are wildly abundant in the population reports, it is getting harder and harder to find bargain buys and large stacks of T206 cards compared to prior years. There are many set builders out there and there are many collectors who just want to own the cards. That may open up opportunities for other tobacco cards and tobacco era cards.

The T213 Coupon (T206’s Baby Brother)

If you want another way to get T206 cards that look very similar, there is the very similar T213 Coupon set from New Orleans. This set has 3 types because they were issued in various years. Here is the breakdown of the years and the graded examples:

• 1910 T213 Coupon Cigs. Type 1 (only 127 PSA and 217 SGC graded examples)
• 1914 T213 Coupon Cigs. Type 2 (1,690 PSA and 3,555 SGC examples)
• 1919 T213 Coupon Cigs. Type 3 (only 320 PSA and 279 SGC examples)

If these cards look familiar is because most had identical images and artwork from the T206 set from 1909-11. The white borders are thinner than the T206 issue and there are 326 cards with players from the American League, National League, Federal League and Southern Association. And an interesting factoid demonstration of the backs from CardboardConnection.com will show just how inflation and price hikes were around the World War I years — 20 cigs for $0.05 in the 1914-15 Type 2 issue and 16 cigs for $0.10 in 2019.

And Beyond Into Scarce Tobacco (Era) Cards

There are almost too many scarce cards to count from the tobacco era. Many sets that were issued in the late 1800s and early 1900s were multi-sport sets. Others are extremely rare and have fetched incredible prices in recent years. Here are some facts:

The 1911-1916 People’s Tobacco set has only 280 graded examples by PSA and another 527 graded examples by SGC (listed as the Kotton back) T216 Kotton back is extremely rare Honus Wagner has 4 variations, but it is more scarce (43 known examples between SGC/PSA) versus the T206 Wagner’s 60-ish estimated examples. The Wagner card fetched almost $80,000 and no T216 card has yet to break above the $100,000 mark.

The 1912 E300 Plow’s Candy with just 136 graded examples and no player having 10 graded PSA cards. SGC has graded only 41 examples of this beautiful set.

And there is also the T212 Obak series of cards from 1910 which features many great players from the old Pacific Coast League.

There are many others issued from garter and clothing sales (yep), newspapers and magazines, bread, bakery and others. Again, it could be a doctoral dissertation to cover them all. Maybe that book would be a better idea.