Tobacco Cards See Daylight Again After the Walls Come Down

The first house that an old high school buddy and his wife owned was built in 1850. Adjacent to the house was a carriage house that had been converted into a garage. Shortly after moving into the house in 1979 it was apparent that some of the support beams in the carriage house needed to be replaced.

To get at the support beams the walls in the carriage house needed to come down. Much to the surprise of my friend, behind the sparse insulation and the horse-hair was a mishmash of early 1900s Americana that included advertising signs, newspapers, pins, and tobacco cards that were also being used as insulation.

Some of the historical artifacts were carted off to the dump along with the debris from the construction. Some items, like the “Modern Women Use Crisco Instead of Whale Blubber” sign, were tossed in 2012 due to mold build up. However, for some reason my friend decided to keep the tobacco cards and the pins that he found behind the walls.

The tobacco cards and pins remained tucked away in a drawer for over 40 years until last month when he posted a couple of group shots of the items on Facebook. In the post he asked – “Does anyone know if they are worth anything?”

I immediately called him and gave him some information about the cards, pricing guides, and grading services. I also emailed him links to online sources of information that included checklists.

It was impossible to determine which tobacco cards he had from the group shots, so I asked him to email me individual photos of the front and backs of each card.

From the photos I determined that he had T205, T206, and E91 baseball cards and T-218 Champions and Prize Fighters cards.

Behind the Walls Checklist

I have listed below the cards by set that my friend found behind the walls. I have also included the photos of the individual cards that my friend sent me organized by set.

T206 Set (all have Sweet Caporal backs)

Jack Hayden

Tom Jones

Nap Lajoie (Portrait)

Matty McIntyre

William O’Neil

Mike Powers

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

T205 Set (all have Sweet Caporal backs)

Bill Bailey

Frank Lang

• 

• 

• 

• 

E91 American Carmel (American Caramel back)

Robert “Bob” Unglaub

• 

• 

T-218 Champions and Prize Fighters (Mecca backs)

Tom Collins

Harry Lewis

Melvin Sheppard

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

My friend also saved some assorted pins that he found, including a President McKinley pin.

My friend and his wife sold the house in 1982. When I asked my friend if he had taken down all of the garage walls. He replied – “I am not sure. It might have been only two walls.” My follow up question was – “Did you take down any of the walls in the house?” He said – “No. We just wallpapered over the walls in the house.”

My buddy and I are now planning a road trip to see the current owners of his first house. We want to see if they would be interested in some free wall demolition work on the condition that we do a 3-way split on the proceeds of any T206 Honus Wagner cards that might be found during the wall removal process.