t222 Fatima player cards

Bill Cornell gave permission to his is great site for this set.

T222 Fatima Overview


In 1914, the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co.
issued a set of photographic cards of major league
baseball players as individual inserts in tins of
their Fatima "Turkish Blend" cigarettes.
Advertising on the back of the cards declared that
the cards were part of a set of 100 "famous
Baseball players, American Athletic champions, and
Photoplay stars". When Jefferson
Burdick published his now-famous "American Card
Catalog" in 1939, he designated this set as "T222" (indicating a tobacco issue), which became its
common name among collectors.









T222 was the second of two baseball sets ever issued
under the Fatima brand name, the other being the T200
set of 16 team cards in the previous year. The Fatima brand was used on many non-sports sets issued over a
period of more than 40 years.

This was one of the last sets of the tobacco
card era that ran from 1909 to 1916. Due
to its small size, scarcity, and unusual photographic
format, it is generally considered by tobacco card
collectors to be a "minor" set; its popularity
has always been far less than large sets like T206
and T205 and similar smaller sets like T200.

The Players



The 52 players in T222 varied widely in
their major league experience and stature. The set
includes just seven players who were
later inducted into the Hall of Fame. At just over
13% of the total, this a far lower percentage than
most other sets of the era - in contrast, the
popular Cracker Jack set also issued in 1914
includes these HOFers excluded from T222: Baker,
Tinker, Plank, Collins, Evers, Bender, Cobb, Brown,
Walsh, Wheat, Carey, Wagner, Lajoie, Speaker,
Mathewson, and Maranville. Missing, too, are
notable stars like Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Hal
Chase, and Joe Wood, all of whom
appeared in the T200 team photos.

T222 includes several obscure players, among them George
Baumgardner (5 seasons, 36-47), Byron Houck (4
seasons, 26-24), Ray Keating (7 seasons, 30-51),
Jack Lelivelt (only 51 AB in the previous season), and
the most insignificant of them all, Billy Orr (2
seasons, .187 lifetime). My research on
player uniforms shows that the photos used in the set were as much
as five years old, which makes the player choices for the set puzzling.










The Teams



Thirteen of the sixteen major league teams are
represented; Pittsburgh, Boston AL, and
Chicago AL (all good teams in 1913) have no players. The Philadelphia A's
(11 players) and the Cubs (8) represent 36.5% of all players in the set.
The remaining 11 teams have between 1
(Cincinnati) and 6 players (New York NL)
represented. See the checklist for a full
list of players and groupings by team.

The Photos



T222's are gelatin-silver photographic prints
measuring approximately 4 1/2 inches in height by 2
1/2 inches in width, but legitimate
(i.e., non-altered) sizes may vary by as much as 1/8" in
either direction. They are printed on an extremely
thin paper stock and have a glossy
exterior that makes the cards tend to
curl when not in protective holders. Players
are shown in full-length poses, most
either at the completion of a throw or awaiting a pitch.
Many of the cards are outlined in
black to enhance the picture quality and the
backgrounds are almost always blurred to further
emphasize the player photo. The Alexander photo below is an example of this.

Pictorial News Co.










All photos in the series were copyrighted by the
Pictorial News Co., whose name appears in a
white-outlined box in the lower right of all of the
cards. Pictorial News Co.
bought photos from freelancers and in turn sold them
to newspapers and others. The company
ceased operations in the 1920's. The names of the
photographers are unknown and will likely never be
known.

Card Numbering





All but five T222's appear with a handwritten
number in the lower left corner of the card,
ranging from 2 to 9 and from 12 to 15 (see
checklist).
Cards without numbers probably appear that way
because the player name is too close to the
bottom border for the number to show. The
numbering scheme has no obvious pattern: for
example, there are 6 "7"'s, but only 2 "2"'s,
and even if the unnumbered cards are assumed to
have hidden numbers, the totals per number
cannot average out evenly. It's possible that
these numbers indicate the sequential issue of
the cards, but this is purely speculative. These
numbers are important in determining scarcity
but not, as yet, for prices.






© Copyright 2002-2007 by Bill Cornell

Here is the link to Bill images of the entire set. Thanks Bill

Bill Cornell's t222 images

Jay

Thank you, Bill.
In viewing these images, assuming that they all started out as black and white picture cards, it is apparent that many have taken on a sepia toned hue, of varying intensities. One card however, Miller Huggins, has taken on a bit of a rose coloration.
We have seen this effect before. For example some n172s exhibit this, and one explanation offered for it was experimentation with the photographic process. How frequently does one encounter Fatima cards with this coloration, and do you have an explanation reguarding its cause?
Gil