The Sweet Caporal 150 factory 649 subset is quite an anomaly in comparison to other Sweet Caporal backs. The American Tobacco Company obviously wanted to start including cards in their Sweet Caporal product that was coming out of factory 649. It’s interesting that they selected so few cards to be released in this way. The Sweet Caporal 150 factory 649 subset consists of only 34 cards.
I can’t figure out any reason why these particular players were selected. I’d guess it was probably just a matter of selecting a Sweet Caporal 150 factory 30 sheet that was handy. The red bar overprint and the new text reading “FACTORY No 649 1st DIST N.Y.” was printed on the back of the SC 150/30 sheet. At the time, tobacco companies were required by law to indicate which factory any card or other piece of advertising media came from.
Each card in this subset is fairly easy to obtain, although if you are looking for a certain player it may take you a little while to track one down. Like Sovereign 150 backs, they can be quite tough to find in higher grades. The prevailing theory on why this is the case goes like this: Cards released in 1909 were most likely handled by kids much more than cards released in 1911, when production of the set was winding down. In 1911, some of the kids who played with the cards in 1909 may have gotten bored with them. When production stopped in 1911, a lot of the cards probably got put in a drawer and forgotten.
The Sweet Caporal 150 factory 649 subset itself does not offer any rarities, but it does have a strong correlation to some rare Old Mills that were printed soon after. 30 of these 34 poses were printed with Old Mill backs in 1910, and those 30 are some of the toughest Old Mills in the set to find. Any theories as to why would just be speculation, but it’s possible that this sheet was used for the SC 150/649 backs for some period of time while the Old Mill backs were being printed. If so, these 30 poses may have started the Old Mill print run late, resulting in lower Pop numbers for these 30 poses. It’s fun to speculate, but I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly why these 30 poses are more scarce with Old Mill backs than other 150-350 subjects.
There does not appear to be any similar correlation with El Principe de Gales or Sovereign 350 backs. The 4 players who were not printed with Old Mill backs are Powers, who is a 150-only subject, and Ewing, Jones, and Spencer, who are all members of the “Elite 11”, a group of subjects who were pulled very early in the 350 series. It’s interesting that all 30 of the remaining players were selected to be printed with Old Mill back, but only 22/34 were used for EPDG and only 10/34 for Sov350.
Thanks as always to t206resource.com for the use of their checklists.