RDR2 Cigarette Cards: Were They A Real Thing?

As far as game worlds go, Red Dead Redemption 2 is massive, and it has the characters and items needed to fill that world. One particularly well-named NPC is a cartophilist – a trading card collector – known as Phineas T. Ramsbottom. Modern-day cartophilists might collect baseball cards or cards for the ever-growing Magic: The Gathering trading card game, but old-timey cartophilists such as RDR2‘s Mr. Ramsbottom were interested in collecting cigarette cards.

Cigarette cards are not an RDR2 invention. Like many things in Rockstar games, the cigarette cards Ramsbottom tasks Arthur Morgan with collecting are an imitation of real-life objects. Aside from collecting a cigarette card set being a requirement for RDR2’s 100% completion rewards, the collectibles offer some value as curios that give the player more insight into the game’s world. The game’s cigarette cards feature portraits of prominent Red Dead-universe Americans, incredible inventions of the age, famous gunslingers (some of which can be met in RDR2‘s gunslinger quests), and more.

RDR2‘s cigarette cards, as their name implies, can be found in premium cigarette packs or in various places throughout the massive map of Red Dead Redemption 2. Cards can no longer be found in real-life cigarette packs, since tobacco sales legislation forbade the practice. What eventually became a collecting craze started out as a marketing ploy by tobacco companies, intended to boost sales and ensure brand loyalty.

The Real-Life History Of RDR2’s Cigarette Cards

According to Baseball Almanac, cigarette cards are the progenitors of modern baseball cards. Card collecting came into the American zeitgeist by way of tobacco companies in the 1870s. At the time, cigarettes were sold in paper casings and were originally supported by blank cards known as stiffeners, according to Historic UK. The potential for advertising was soon recognized in these stiffeners, and thus began the practice of printing pictures and words on cigarette cards. The trading card phenomenon took off in the U.S. and UK, before spreading around the world.

As cigarette smoking became more popular, so did card collecting. According to Baseball Almanac, New York’s Goodwin & Company produced the first true series of baseball cigarette cards between 1887 and 1890. Famous athletes were especially popular features on early cigarette cards. By the early 20th century, over 300 cigarette manufacturers were in on the craze, according to Historic UK, with thousands of different trading card sets in circulation. A materials shortage caused by World War I ended cigarette card production in 1917, and it wasn’t until 1922 that they made a return.

The London Cigarette Card Company, which buys and sells trading cards and produces one of the leading trading card catalogues, claims the 1920s and 30s were the golden ages of cigarette cards. Manufacturers scrambled to get ahead of the competition and introduced gimmicks, such as adhesive-backed cards to put in specialty albums, card series that could be arranged to form a larger picture, cards with silk-embroidered flowers, and tiny gramophone records that could actually produce sound.

World War II once again stopped the production of cigarette cards due to material rations, and the industry never quite recovered, due to increasing anti-smoking legislation. Trading cards from non-tobacco products persist (such as the ever-popular Pokémon trading cards), but the hobby epitomized by Phineas T. Ramsbottom’s obsessive and expensive collecting in Red Dead Redemption 2 remains a historical niche of the trading card world.

Sources: Baseball Almanac, Historic UK, London Cigarette Card Company

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