1910 Honest Silhouettes (T100) Set

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	T100 Honest Silhouettes
Year	c. 1910
Size	2 1/4″ x 3 1/4″
Images	Black and White
Type	Tobacco
Number in Set	50

1910 Honest Silhouettes (T100) Overview

The T100 Honest Silhouettes set was mostly a non-sports issue. However, one baseball player is in the set, has drawn the interest of collectors as well as a football and boxing card.

This is one of the more unique pre-war sets featuring silhouetted cards of various subjects. Most of the cards in the set are of the non-sports variety, including things like dog walkers, people smoking, etc.

The fronts featured the silhouetted picture and the backs had a large full-back advertisement for Honest Tobacco. Honest, of course, is well-known by pre-war collectors as it was one of the brands found in the popular T205 baseball card set.

A total of 50 cards are in the set, as stated on the reverse of the cards, and this site has pictures of all of them.

Condition isn’t often terrible with these cards. They are a bit thicker than your standard tobacco cards of the era and that has helped keep many of them in decent shape. However, the large amount of black ink on the cards keeps them from usually being in high-grade shape. Clear and sometimes large scratches are often quite visible on the cards, detracting a bit from their overall condition.

All cards in the set are extremely rare. As of 2021, PSA and SGC have combined to grade only around 50 of the cards in all. Fewer than ten of the desirable baseball card have been graded.

Baseball and Roger Bresnahan?

The baseball player is not identified. Only a silhouette of a catcher in action receiving a ball is shown on the front. The back has an advertisement for Honest tobacco as well as giving the location of the factory number and location where the card was printed. The card was printed by the American Tobacco Company and the factory information is found on their other sets as well.

While the baseball catcher is often cited by sellers as depicting Hall of Fame Giants catcher Roger Bresnahan, that is unlikely to be correct. The biggest conflict comes in that this is believed to be a 1910 set and Bresnahan left New York after the 1908 season. Even aside from that, in reality, the subject could have been one of several different catchers in New York at the time.

Here’s a closer look at the subject.

Football and Others

While baseball is considered to be the top card, a few other sports issues are included and sought after here, including football, boxing, and golf. All are equally rare and sometimes seem to be seen even less than the baseball card.

The football card might be confused by some collectors as a rugby issue. However, that is almost certainly not the case. For one thing, this was an American set and the country had really moved on from rugby by this point. The sport at this time was known here as football and including an international rugby card wouldn’t make much sense.

Some will point to the size of the ball on the card and believe that this could be a rugby card as it is larger than what we are used to. But that size football was still being used in American football until around 1912 when a smaller model was introduced. This is undoubtedly an early American football card.

Another silhouettes card set was also created by Admiral involving a number of different subjects/topics.

1910 Honest Silhouettes (T100) Checklist

To date, I have not seen a complete T100 Honest Silhouettes checklist. This, no doubt, has to do with the rarity of these cards. In an effort to create one, however, I will list the cards with short descriptions below.