1888 Lake Erie Tobacco State Governors (N559) Non-Sport Forum

I noticed this checklist for the first time, and it stood out that there is no Illinois governor here. Cnangle, did you find any reference to why this might be, in your research?  It appears to be the only state excluded.  Illinois has such a proud gubernatorial history (4 of our last 7 went to prison).  I would like a card of one, but maybe none exist.

There are 10 States/Territories missing from the checklist.

No. Sorry. This is an extremely rare set. It's like the holy grail for political tobacco card collectors. (yes there are such people). It's speculated that there are 48 total cards in this set but only 38 have been found. Illinois must be one of those still missing. 

Here's some images from The Trader Speaks if you haven't seen an example yet. It's a good looking set, but at over $100 a card, I'll pass.

There's also a great write up about the cards and additional images on the Heritage Auctions website.

That's more than you probably wanted...but I am a tobacco junkie.

BTW...the images on the Heritage Auction site are of a 35 card set that sold for over $11k in 2014.

Actually I had already looked at the Trader Speaks photos, looking for an answer before I brought it up here.  And I guess I probably won't be getting the Illinois governor if there isn't even a known copy!

Thanks Chad.  (I love the new profile photo BTW)

And Chuck, I guess I just did the math of 38 states, minus Illinois Governor, plus POTUS, equals 38 cards, and assumed the rest were there.  But I hadn't considered territorial governors.  Now I'm going to have to compare this list to my governors graves photos and see if I've visited any of these from this checklist.  As I may have told you, governors are a category I visit graves for, and I have been to 34 state and 6 territorial governors' graves.

I contacted Bill from traderspeaks.com and he graciously has allowed us to use his images for this set so we can have a couple example images. He said he uses TCDB as a reference site and he appreciates our work.