Card Identification Forum

Billy, I actually do agree with your logic and reasoning here. I reckon that would be the proper way to list them based on current site guidelines. However...

I wonder if we'd be better off making an exception for this set. I believe that most collectors of these cards collect a variety of backs, and that many are happy to just get one of them, due to their age, condition, and price point. As such, I personally think that we would be doing a greater service to collectors listing them as VARs because of the way the system recognizes them. Obviously no one here will ever complete the entire set, thanks to Honus. But if you're trying to get as many as possible, the basic set/master set options would allow for that to be better documented than the 16 separate sets, or parallel sets.

Just food for thought. Like I said, I fully agree with your point that they weren't packaged together, as evident by the different backs. We could still acknowledge this with the "Trivia" section (I think that would be a better spot for this info than Release Notes in this case) while still catering to the collectors of these if we do the VAR list. 

How would you do the factory backs like 

Factory 6, 17,25,30,33,42,and 649  would these be variations or something else 

some have 2 factories listed on the back usually the Sweet Caporal that has 30 and 649

Billy Kingsley wrote:

They are not variations, they are separate sets that share artwork. They were not in the same packs, ever. Each back was only packed in one cigarette brand, although it is possible that there are variations among individual sets. 

To be truly listed properly they would be under an American Tobacco Company listing with no base set, and the 16 different backs each listed as a related set. (Not insert or parallel, but related set is not an option to choose)

I'm aware that this will not be done, but I hope only to keep the actual facts present somewhere, considering how much of tobacco card era history has been rewritten in retrospect to match the catalog.