1911 Cullivan’s Fireside Set (T208) and Checklist

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	T208 Cullivan’s Fireside
Year	1911
Size	1 1/2″ x 2 1/2″
Images	Color
Type	Tobacco
Number in Set	18

1911 Cullivan’s Fireside Overview

T208 Oldring.jpg

The 1911 T208 Cullivan’s Fireside set is extremely rare. Cards celebrated the 1910 World’s Champion Philadelphia Athletics team.

Fronts included a color picture with the player’s name and team printed in blue ink at the bottom. The blue ink was a little different from what was seen on other tobacco issues of the era, which usually featured dark brown or blank ink. The back had an advertisement for Cullivan’s Fireside tobacco, indicating that one was included in each package of their plain scrap tobacco.

The backs also identified the maker, Thomas Cullivan Tobacco, and the company’s location at 610 Turtle Street in Syracuse, New York.

Numerous other sets recognized the Athletics’ championship team as well. The exact same pictures were also used for the E104-1 Nadja, the D359 Williams Baking, and the D359 Rochester Baking sets. All four of the sets are relatively scarce.

The Athletics team included five Hall of Famers in Home Run Baker, Chief Bender, Eddie Collins, Connie Mack, and Eddie Plank. All five are included in this 18-card set. It may surprise some collectors that Plank appears in this set. After all, he is believed to have not wanted to be linked to tobacco issues. But since this appears to be a generic set that was simply used by different businesses, that could explain his appearance here.

The cards are extremely rare and even low-grade commons usually sell for $2,000 or more. To date, PSA, SGC, and Beckett have not even combined to grade 100 total of these cards.