Topps 206 is an expensive premium card range made to look like cigarette cards of yore. In addition to the size and design, Topps also use some old tobacco company names on some of the card backs to introduce even more parallels into the card hobby, except this time you can't see the parallel until you turn the card over.
Marc, who also sent me the Topps Archives card that I blogged about a few weeks ago, sent me two Topps 206 cards released this year. I've scanned them together because that's easier.
Card Number 421: Topps 206, 2020; unnumbered
Card Number 422: Topps 206 - Piedmont Back Parallel, 2020; unnumbered
I've written before about how I feel ambivalent about Topps using tobacco brands on their cards. The original T206 cards that were released from 1909 to 1911 by the American Tobacco Company numbered 524 different cards over the three years, with different backs representing 16 different brands of cigarettes or tobacco. The same card was printed with different backs in that original release as well.
Piedmont was one of those original brands, launched in 1905 by a subsidiary of American Tobacco Co. called Liggett & Myers, which continued to produce the brand after the American Tobacco Co. was broken up so it was no longer a monopoly. Piedmont is a region of North Carolina, near the border with Virginia, where yellow tobacco is grown. It's sometimes referred to as the "Tobacco Belt", and that probably explains why the brand name was chosen. The Piedmont brand existed at least up until the Second World War.
I feel uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of cigarette branding, even historical brands like Piedmont, on the back of a Tony Gwynn card released in 2020. Given that Tony died after several courses of treatment for cancer caused by chewing tobacco, and the subsequent lawsuit against the tobacco industry by his family, it feels in poor taste to have his picture on a card with a cigarette brand on the back. Tony has appeared in almost every Topps set this year, and they could have possibly left him out of this one.
Total: 422 cards
Interesting point about having Gwynn appear on a card with a cigarette brand on the back. I didn't even think of that. I wonder if Gwynn's family even knows about this product and the fact that Piedmont was a tobacco company.
ReplyDeleteAs for the cards themselves... it's a cool design and at the very minimum a conversation piece.
I'm a bit surprised they use the brand names at all, really, given the association with tobacco. There's no way of avoiding the links on the genuine historical cards but reproducing the branding is odd in my opinion.
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