T201
T201's, also known as Mecca Double Folders, were a type of tobacco trading card. They were issued in 1911 by the Mecca cigarette company, and featured color drawings of professional baseball players. The ‘T201’ designation comes from the American Card Catalogue, an authoritative guide to trading cards issued prior to 1951. (In other words, before the Topps company began to dominate the industry.) The set features a total of 50 cards measuring 2-3/16 inches x 4-3/4 inches. The 100 players pictured include a number of Hall of Famers, such as Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and Tris Speaker.
T201’s were called Double Folders because of their innovative design. Each card featured two players, one in a full picture on the front and one on half of the back. The other half of the back featured player statistics (one of the first baseball trading cards to do so) and an ad for Mecca. The cards were designed so that, when they were folded appropriately, the player on the back would appear on the legs of the picture on the front. Topps borrowed this idea in designing its 1955 Doubleheaders set.
Like other tobacco sets, such as the famous T205 and T206 issues, T201's were not numbered. Checklists generally list the cards alphabetically by the last name of the player pictured on the front of the card.
