Close, But No Cigarette

Sometimes it pays to gamble on eBay and sometimes you just miss out.  This time I missed it by that much.



I was surfing the tobacco card section of eBay and found that someone was selling a pair of 1888 N29 ALLEN & GINTER'S CHAMPIONS tobacco cards and they were sitting at a buck a piece.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. 

Then I read the description which stated, "May have been clipped off of original advertising poster or one of the premium albums."  But for a buck I was willing to gamble that their backs looked like this:

because they were clipped from an album and not an advertisement.  Once I got them in hand, I fear they are advert clippings.  And while they seem to be pretty old, I can't be certain that they are pre-1900 cardboard pieces. 


Be that as it may, these fellas are gonna look great in my 2012 Mustache Portraits collection.