{"product_id":"antique-thompsons-embossed-cigar-label-tampa-fl-treasures","title":"Antique 1930s Thompson’s Panatelas Gold Embossed Cigar Label 🚬 Now 2 for 5¢, Brooklyn Litho","description":"\u003ch2\u003eTwo for a Nickel? 🚬 Antique 1930s Thompson's Panatelas Gold Embossed Cigar Label, Brooklyn Litho\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 8 1\/2\" x 7\"\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\/alYz3Ux3SNM\" 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\u003cp\u003e🚬 \u003cstrong\u003eOne word on this label is doing all the work: “now”.\u003c\/strong\u003e Across the top, in silver script on red, it reads \u003cem\u003enow 2 for 5¢\u003c\/em\u003e — not a price, an \u003cstrong\u003eannouncement of a price cut\u003c\/strong\u003e. Somebody had a whole new label embossed, gilded and printed in Brooklyn purely to tell a shopkeeper’s customers that Thompson’s Panatelas had come down to two cigars for a nickel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🧷 Details\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eApprox. \u003cstrong\u003e8 1\/2\" x 7\"\u003c\/strong\u003e ~\u003cbr\u003e\nOriginal embossed cigar-box label on heavy stock, unused\u003cbr\u003e\nPrinted: \u003cem\u003enow 2 for 5¢\u003c\/em\u003e · \u003cstrong\u003eThompson’s PANATELAS\u003c\/strong\u003e · \u003cem\u003eQUALITY MILD CIGARS\u003c\/em\u003e, with MILD set inside a gold diamond · and a lower band repeating \u003cem\u003e2 for 5¢ — Thompson’s Panatelas — 2 for 5¢\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nPrinter’s imprint along the bottom edge: \u003cstrong\u003eCONSOLIDATED LITHOGRAPHING CORPORATION, BROOKLYN, N.Y.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nThe reverse is unprinted, and the embossing stands through it in reverse relief\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📅 What dates it\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe printer’s own name is the clock. Jacob A. Voice had run his own lithographic firm since about \u003cstrong\u003e1911\u003c\/strong\u003e; in \u003cstrong\u003e1925\u003c\/strong\u003e he merged it with \u003cstrong\u003eWm. Steiner \u0026amp; Sons\u003c\/strong\u003e and the business took the name \u003cstrong\u003eConsolidated Lithographing Corporation\u003c\/strong\u003e. A sheet carrying that corporate name cannot have been printed before 1925.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe banner does the rest. Through the 1920s the \u003cstrong\u003efive-cent cigar\u003c\/strong\u003e was the working man’s smoke; when the Depression arrived and incomes fell, the nickel cigar became the industry’s standard price point. \u003cem\u003e“Now 2 for 5¢”\u003c\/em\u003e is a step \u003cem\u003ebelow\u003c\/em\u003e that standard — two and a half cents a cigar — and the word “now” says the brand had just gone there. That puts this sheet in the \u003cstrong\u003e1930s\u003c\/strong\u003e, at the sharp end of the price war that the nickel cigar started.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏭 Consolidated Lithographing, Brooklyn\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConsolidated was one of the largest paper-label printers in America, and it got that way by swallowing its rivals: \u003cstrong\u003eSchmidt \u0026amp; Company\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eHeywood, Strasser \u0026amp; Voight\u003c\/strong\u003e, and the \u003cstrong\u003eAmerican Lithographic Company\u003c\/strong\u003e all ended up inside it. Voice himself had started at Wm. Steiner \u0026amp; Sons in \u003cstrong\u003e1903\u003c\/strong\u003e and worked his way to owning the successor to the firm that hired him. \u003cstrong\u003eFortune\u003c\/strong\u003e put him and the company in its \u003cstrong\u003eMarch 1933\u003c\/strong\u003e issue, illustrated with thirteen original chromolithographs of cigar-box art — a business magazine treating label printing as a subject worth thirteen plates.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHis son \u003cstrong\u003eSidney P. Voice\u003c\/strong\u003e was vice-president, and the cigar-band collection Sidney built is now held as an archival collection in New York. The men who ran these presses knew they were making art; it was everybody else who treated it as packaging.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🌴 Thompson’s and Tampa\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’ve always had this one down as a Tampa label, from \u003cstrong\u003eThompson \u0026amp; Co.\u003c\/strong\u003e, and there’s good reason for it. That Tampa house sold its cigars under its own name — \u003cstrong\u003eThompson’s Tampa\u003c\/strong\u003e was one of its trademarks, alongside \u003cstrong\u003eEmpress of Cuba\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eRoyal Palm\u003c\/strong\u003e — and its Empress of Cuba label came off the presses of the very same \u003cstrong\u003eConsolidated Lithographing Corporation\u003c\/strong\u003e whose name runs along the bottom of this sheet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMark A. Thompson was a Chicago man who had been in the mail-order coffee business before he started Thompson \u0026amp; Co. as a \u003cstrong\u003email-order cigar house in 1915\u003c\/strong\u003e. The company’s own story starts it in Key West, until hurricanes wrecked the cigar factories there, and within a few years he had moved to Tampa’s \u003cstrong\u003eYbor City\u003c\/strong\u003e. Tampa was the \u003cstrong\u003eCigar Capital of the World\u003c\/strong\u003e by then. Ybor City had grown up in the 1880s around Cuban cigar makers who moved their factories north to get out from under the tariff on Cuban cigars, and Thompson’s own brands were made with Havana tobacco. In 1923 the company put up a two-story building on Edison Avenue with space for hand-rolling cigars, a cigar vault, shipping, and even its own print shop for labels. In 1925 Thompson opened a machine plant forty miles east in \u003cstrong\u003eBartow\u003c\/strong\u003e, eventually running thirty cigar-making machines and close to 100,000 cigars a day, and in 1929 the company made and sold about \u003cstrong\u003etwenty million cigars\u003c\/strong\u003e. In time it came to hold Tampa’s \u003cstrong\u003eMail Permit No. 1\u003c\/strong\u003e, a fitting number for a house that sold by mail from the start.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMark Thompson died in April 1935, and his widow, \u003cstrong\u003eClara Ward Thompson\u003c\/strong\u003e, ran the company as president until her death in 1951, so the Thompson house was in her hands through the rest of the Depression and the war years. The company is still selling cigars by mail more than a century after he started it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎨 How a label like this was actually made\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChromolithography meant a separate stone for every color, hand-separated by an artist — the most ambitious cigar labels ran to as many as \u003cstrong\u003eforty stones\u003c\/strong\u003e. The gold was a further pass: either genuine \u003cstrong\u003egold leaf\u003c\/strong\u003e or \u003cstrong\u003emetallic bronzing powder\u003c\/strong\u003e dusted onto ink while it was still wet. And then the embossing, which is what you feel before you see it here — a pair of engraved \u003cstrong\u003ebrass dies\u003c\/strong\u003e, a raised male and a sunken female, registered exactly to the printed image and driven together in a press of around \u003cstrong\u003ethirty tons\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe peak of that craft ran from the \u003cstrong\u003e1890s to about 1920\u003c\/strong\u003e. This sheet comes after it — a late, full-dress example of embossed gilt label work being spent on a cigar selling two for a nickel, at the moment cheap offset printing was about to end the whole tradition.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🚬 What a “panatela” is\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA shape, not a blend: long, slim and lightly tapered, a thinner smoke than the fat shapes at the same price. Calling a two-for-a-nickel cigar a \u003cem\u003ePanatela\u003c\/em\u003e and a \u003cem\u003equality mild cigar\u003c\/em\u003e is the whole marketing argument in two words — cheap, but not coarse.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e❓ Questions People Ask\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWho made the cigars?\u003c\/strong\u003e The sheet names the brand, \u003cstrong\u003eThompson’s Panatelas\u003c\/strong\u003e, and the printer, Consolidated Lithographing Corporation of Brooklyn. I’ve always had it down as a Thompson \u0026amp; Co. of Tampa brand, and the story of that house is above.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIs the gold real?\u003c\/strong\u003e Cigar-label gilding of this period was done with genuine gold leaf or with metallic bronzing powder; the label does not say which was used on this one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIs it a reproduction?\u003c\/strong\u003e No — an original unused label on heavy period stock, with real embossing you can feel from both sides.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDoes “2 for 5¢” mean it is from the 1900s?\u003c\/strong\u003e No. The five-cent cigar was still the standard into the Depression; this label announces a cut below it, and its printer’s corporate name only existed from 1925.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e🏡 Good for framing, cigar and tobacciana collections, chromolithography and embossed-printing collections, Brooklyn and New York printing history, Depression-era advertising, and man-cave, bar and study walls.\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-contract-embossed-cigar-label-consolidated-lithographing-brooklyn\"\u003eAntique Contract Cigar Label 🚬 ~ Gold Embossed Wax Seal Design, 1920s-1940s\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1930s-40s-cornwall-arms-embossed-cigar-label-philadelphia-inner\"\u003eAntique 1930s-40s Cornwall Arms Embossed Cigar Label 🛡️ Perfection in Every Puff, Philadelphia Inner Label NOS\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1900s-1920s-little-alto-gold-embossed-cigar-label-treasures\"\u003eAntique 1900s - 1920s Little Alto 🚬 Gold Embossed Cigar Label\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":42496401342696,"sku":"VAG-7585344225512","price":5.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.3676250463_iflo.jpg?v=1785356590","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-thompsons-embossed-cigar-label-tampa-fl-treasures","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}