{"product_id":"antique-1930s-emilia-garcia-cigar-box-label-east-prospect-pa","title":"Antique 1930s Emilia Garcia Cigar Box Label 🚬 Embossed Tobacco Ephemera 5 Cent Cigar New Old Stock NOS Collectible","description":"\u003ch2\u003eEmilia Garcia Cigar Box Label 🚬 Gold Embossed, East Prospect Cigar Co., York County PA\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9\" x 2\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KjR8NtzrjlE\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eA long strip printed to look like warm cedar wood grain, with EMILIA GARCIA standing right up off the paper in raised gold letters edged in black. Off to the right, in a little ruled box: \"THE CIGARS HEREIN CONTAINED WERE MANUFACTURED TO RETAIL AT NOT MORE THAN 5 CENTS EACH AND ARE SO TAX-PAID.\" Never used, and you can see the lettering pushed through in reverse on the plain back. I have a stack, so you'll get one just like the one shown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🏘️ A Nickel Cigar from East Prospect\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEmilia Garcia sounds like Havana - the company's tins even said \"Mild Havana\" - but it came out of East Prospect, a little borough in York County, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna. That Spanish ring was the point. America's clear Havana makers had dressed their labels in Spanish themes until smokers tied anything even a little bit Spanish to Cuban tobacco, and a Pennsylvania nickel cigar could borrow all of that with nothing but a lovely name. Around 1930 the East Prospect Cigar Company, the E.P.C. Co., was probably the biggest of the town's many cigar makers - A.F. Burg, Q.S. Overmiller, the Temple Cigar Company and the National Cigar Company were all making cigars there too - and Emilia Garcia was one of its top brands along with Epco, Las Vegas, Airdale and Flyer. Another Emilia Garcia label printed on this same wood grain, the oval \"Mild Blend\" one, carries the E.P.C.Co. monogram right in the middle. Collectors' notes credit B.M. Hanigan and Paul Dellinger with running the company and date it back to 1881, and the lore has always held that the two of them believed in Emilia Garcia enough to spend real money on her labels.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEast Prospect goes back to 1849, when John A. Jacobs, a farmer and a local preacher for the Evangelical Association, laid the town out, and it became a borough in 1874. When George Prowell wrote it up in 1907 he put it eleven miles from York and two miles from the river, and said the view up and down the broad Susquehanna was \"truly enchanting.\" He named its cigar men too: L. E. Oleweiler had a large cigar factory, later run by Edward J. Sitler, George Young had another, and Charles Myers made the cigar boxes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYork County was cigar country. Local historian George Prowell counted 1,200 cigar factories in the county in 1907, turning out 300 million cigars a year, and named East Prospect among the towns that did best by them. By the 1920s the York County Cigar Manufacturers Association was calling it \"The home of the five cent cigars\" - which is exactly what this label is selling. By the 1920s about one in every five cigars made in the United States came out of York County, and by 1927 Red Lion alone was turning out a fifth of all the American-made nickel cigars. Local legend holds that in the little factory towns you could read the health of the whole economy by the smell of tobacco drifting down the street on a warm afternoon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🧾 That Little Tax Box\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUncle Sam taxed cigars by the price they were made to sell for, so the box had to say which class it was in. That little notice goes back to the Revenue Act of 1918, which let the tax commissioner require a conspicuous label on every box naming the price clause the cigars were tax-paid under, and it had to match the stamp. Under the 1925 U.S. Code a cigar made to retail at not more than 5 cents paid $2 per thousand, while one made to sell for over 20 cents paid $13.50. This one is proudly in the cheapest class: a good honest nickel smoke dressed up in gold.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🖨️ Printed in Brooklyn\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEmilia Garcia's labels were printed by Consolidated Lithographing Corporation of Brooklyn, New York, the firm Jacob A. Voice put together around 1925 by merging with Wm. Steiner \u0026amp; Sons. It grew into one of the biggest paper-label printers in the country, and its later work ran from labels and containers to greeting cards, menus, clock faces and playing cards. Cigar label houses like it built their pictures up in as many as ten colors on stone and finished the fancy ones with gold leaf and embossing, which is how a nickel cigar ended up with letters you can feel. They did the gorgeous Emilia Garcia inner-lid label too - the goddess in pink standing on a globe - and I carry that one as well, if you'd like the pair.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt looks great framed long and skinny over a bar, a desk, or a doorway in a den.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-garcia-y-vega-embossed-cigar-label-tampa-fl-1900s-1920s\"\u003eAntique 1900s-1930s Garcia y Vega Cigar Box Label 🌿 La Flor de Garcia y Vega NOS Embossed Gold Foil Tampa\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/quality-5-cent-cigar-label-gold-embossed-paper\"\u003eAntique Quality 5 Cigar Label 🚬 Gold Embossed Round Paper Tobacco Advertising Seal NOS Cigar Store Tobacciana\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1910s-1930s-very-mild-cigar-band-label-treasures-gifts-home\"\u003eAntique Cigar Band Label 🚬 Very Mild Gold \u0026amp; Brown 1910s - 1930s New Old Stock Tobacco Collector Ephemera\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40769768521893,"sku":"VAG-7034830291109","price":5.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.4076259166_a8hl.jpg?v=1785956038","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1930s-emilia-garcia-cigar-box-label-east-prospect-pa","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}