Background & Research
About T222 Fatima
The sepia-toned Fatima set placed larger photographic images inside cigarette packs, which must have surprised smokers used to smaller and more colorful cards like T206. This set survives in modest numbers today and even advanced collectors see them rarely. This page explains the set's structure and key details, integrating all three subjects, baseball, athletes, and actors, into one coherent reference.
Based on its players and teams, distribution started in April 1914. It includes a number of 1913 World Series champion Athletics players.
Current research here supports 64 known subjects: 52 baseball, 4 athletes, and 8 actors as "photoplay stars" from varied studios. Fatima never reached the promised 100 photographic cards.
Most hobby sources focus on the 52 baseball players and failed to recognize their numbered groupings of four each, so failed to recognize this set as complete at 64 total subjects.
The fronts point to 15 numbered groups of four, plus four unnumbered baseball players and four unnumbered variations for Pathé actors.
Hall of Fame and marquee baseball subjects include Walter Johnson, Grover Alexander, Frank Chance, Hughie Jennings, Rube Marquard, and Miller Huggins.
When numbered, the small handwritten digits on lower-left card corners are tough to identify. #10-15 card groups are much tougher to find and include key star Walter Johnson.
T222 belongs to the post-T206 tobacco world. Fatima used larger photographic cards, and their fronts and backs point to one mixed-subject issue whose known checklist resolves more cleanly than hobby tradition has allowed.
A Fatima card front and back
T222 cards are notably larger than T206s, at over 4" high. They used actual photographic paper and their surfaces often show fracture lines known as craquelure in the surface gloss. Each card's back text was ink-stamped using machined dyes and this stamp left visible impressions on the thin stock. Backs describe the set itself: 100 photographs of baseball players, athletic champions, and photoplay stars. That language may have encouraged smokers to keep buying packs long after they owned every subject now known.
The companion team-card issue
Collectors who recognize Fatima cards might also know its landscape team cards from fall 1913. That T200 set includes all 16 teams and two formats for each pose. One measures 2 5/8″ x 4 3/4″ with a small Fatima logo on the card front. Dedicated smokers and collectors obtained a larger 13" x 21" premium without Fatima's ad by sending 40 coupons to the Liggett & Myers premium department.
US government copyright records show that Pictorial News Co. of New York, the name in small text on lower-right corners, claimed use of these team photos starting in August of 1913, so distribution followed for some time afterwards. This set profile mentions T200 here because today's hobby knows "Fatima" primarily for those two baseball issues.
Why Did Fatima Make Their Own Cards?
Tobacco companies of 1913-14 faced a very different competitive landscape after the American Tobacco trust was broken up by government order in 1911. Familiar cigarette brands were redistributed among successor companies and continued to compete in a more fragmented market. In my own searches of Liggett & Myers premium catalogs and related printed advertising from this period, including research at the Smithsonian, I did not locate Fatima offers for these photo cards, despite the company's extensive advertising elsewhere in these same years. That does not prove the cards were never advertised in print, but it does suggest a more targeted and possibly regional campaign that sat outside the company's larger premium department and its better-documented durable-goods offers.
This catalog introduction promises "just the things [you] want most," but showed more durable objects like wooden toys and clothing, so Fatima must have considered their photographic cards more ephemeral and only available in the packs themselves.
Players and teams shown narrow the issue's likely window: Bill Sweeney appears with Chicago after his February 1914 move, while Byron Houck still appears with Philadelphia before his May 1914 departure. That evidence is consistent with T222 reaching smokers during the 1914 season.
How Card Numbers Form a Checklist
Organizing T222 numbers into a checklist is trickier than almost any other set because the viewer has to discern small, handwritten digits from the edge of a photo whose surviving examples are often cracked or faded in these areas. Careful inspection of all T222 fronts, baseball, athlete, or photoplay star, does eventually reveal 16 groups of four cards each. The Pathé stars add nuance by appearing as an unnumbered group as well as #11, making them the only four subjects in the set with a second known front format. That is why the checklist resolves best as 64 confirmed subject slots, while a physically complete run would contain 68 cards if both Pathé versions are counted.
Finding the handwritten (or unwritten) numbers
Checklist and Populations by Subject Group
What follows keeps the numbered facts in the same order collectors tend to learn the set itself. The earlier baseball run appears first, followed by the scarcer athlete and actor groups, and then the later baseball numbers. PSA/SGC counts are current to mid-2026, with single digits known for the toughest groups of actors and athletes.
| Group | Subjects | Theme | PSA/SGC Counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| NNO | George Burns, George Chalmers, Rube Marquard, Hub Perdue | Baseball | 180 |
| 2 | Heinie Zimmerman, Hughie Jennings, Grover Alexander, Al Demaree | Baseball | 177 |
| 3 | Frank Chance, Art Fletcher, Stuffy McInnis, Jack Barry | Baseball | 116 |
| 4 | Wally Schang, Jack Lapp, Amos Strunk, Bill Sweeney | Baseball | 177 |
| 5 | Jimmy Archer, Larry McLean, Ossie Vitt, Ed Reulbach | Baseball | 132 |
| 6 | Eddie Murphy, Bullet Joe Bush, Fritz Maisel, Rube Oldring | Baseball | 144 |
| 7 | Byron Houck, Bill Orr, Slim Sallee, Roger Bresnahan | Baseball | 129 |
| 8 | Miller Huggins, Red Murray, Boardwalk Brown, Ivey Wingo | Baseball | 118 |
| 9 | Vic Saier, Tommy Leach, Lefty Tyler, Art Phelan | Baseball | 127 |
| 10 | Emil Muller, Matt McGrath, Alvah Meyer, Homer Baker | Athletes | < 10 |
| 11 | Crane Wilbur, Pearl Sindelar, Paul Panzer, Della Connor | Photoplay stars | < 10 |
| 12 | Jimmy Austin, Rube Benton, Ray Keating, Sherry Magee | Baseball | 102 |
| 13 | Hans Lobert, Earl Hamilton, George Baumgardner, J. C. "Red" Smith | Baseball | 70 |
| 14 | George McBride, Nemo Leibold, Wildfire Schulte, Ray Morgan | Baseball | 58 |
| 15 | Walter Johnson, Jack Lelivelt, John Henry, Lee Magee | Baseball | 61 |
| NNO | J. Warren Kerrigan, Ethel Grandin, King Baggot, Florence Lawrence | Photoplay stars | < 10 |
The photoplay stars have all been confirmed to exist, but the saved July 2026 reports support only a broad reading here: each non-baseball four-card group shown in this table is best treated as fewer than ten total known.
Why Numbering Matters
T222 collectors often refer to this set as 36 baseball players and 16 "very rare" baseball players without referring to the front numbers directly. Based on combined PSA and SGC population reports, the 36 easier baseball players are, in fact, the four NNO baseball subjects and the 32 players numbered #2-9 on the front in groups of four.
What to Remember About This Set
- T222 reads best as one mixed-subject Fatima issue, not three separate sets divided by subject type.
- The known checklist resolves into 16 four-card subject slots: NNO baseball, #2-9 baseball, #10 athletes, #11 Pathé actors, #12-15 baseball, and NNO actor groups.
- That structure supports 64 confirmed subject slots, with 68 physical cards possible only if both Pathé versions are counted.
- The easier baseball run is the NNO group plus #2-9. The scarcer material begins with #10 and includes the NNO actor groups.
- Population patterns and team designations are consistent with a 1914 distribution window, even if the full production story remains incomplete.
Further Hobby Reading
- 1913 T200 Fatima Team Cards Set and Checklist — useful for separating the standard ad-backed team cards from the larger coupon premium made from the same image series.
- T213 Coupon Cigarettes Set and Checklist — useful background on the longer-running Coupon issue that more closely carried forward the smaller T206-style tobacco card format.
- The 1914 T222 Fatima Wilcox Hotel Collection — a recent hobby article that helps illustrate how scattered and incomplete the issue could still seem from surviving finds.
References and Notes
- T200 team images were entered for copyright on August 1, 1913, and cataloged on August 6 under Pictorial News Co., New York, in the 1913 Catalog of Copyright Entries, Works of Art.