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Jaybird says:

Okay. So a cabinet card was about 4 inches by 6 inches (add a quarter inch to each of those for an exact size, but if you’re thinking of a 4×6 card, you’ve got it). Wanna see a cabinet card of Pauline Hall? Here you go. (I don’t know if the second one counts as her wearing “tights”.) Here’s the raciest picture I could find of Lillian Russell. That one might be worth trading for… but most of the other ones were closer to this.

At first I thought Mechanic’s Delight, Spearhead, Horseshoe, and Climax were all different kinds of marbles but, no. They all refer to tobacco plug tags. (Here’s a bunch of Mechanic’s Delight ones.)

Looking at the plug tags, I didn’t immediately understand how they’d be used. They’ve got a sharp point but… how are they applied? I tried googling for plug tags but all I found were a whole bunch of plug tags but none of them actually in use in a plug of tobacco.

Then I realized that I didn’t know what a plug of tobacco looked like. So I googled “plug tobacco” and it became apparent. It looks like a brownie. The little metal plug would get pressed into the top of the brownie and that’s how you’d know that your tobacco was legit Mechanic’s Delight instead of that bullcrap Climax tobacco.Report