As a follow up to my previous post about American Tobacco Company, I thought I’d do a post today on their most famous brand and the tins that are out there.
Lucky Strike is a brand made famous through advertising, but it has a long history and precedes the cigarettes we know it as now.
In 1871 the Lucky Strike brand was started as a chewing tobacco for the Patterson Tobacco Co. which was bought by American Tobacco and James Duke in 1905. Under American Tobacco the Lucky Strike brand was reworked as a cigarette brand in 1916 to compete with Camels which were becoming popular and were owned by R.J. Reynolds.
Lucky Strike Vertical Tin – This tin dates to the 1920s and is distinguished by the tagline “It’s toasted” and reworking of the logo from the previous one used by Patterson, seen below.
Lucky Strike Vertical Tin – This tin predates the 1920s redesign and while it still prominently features the R.A. Patterson name, the company by this point had already been purchased by American Tobacco Company.
Half and Half Vertical Telescoping Tin – This is a really interesting tin that can shrink as you use the tobacco out of it so that your fingers can reach the tobacco at the bottom when you’re done. For a better idea about the telescoping tin look here, here, and here. Ads for the Half and Half mixture and telescoping tin can be found in newspapers from 1936, I do not know if they predate the ads by any time.
Lucky Strike Flat Tin – This tin features the Patterson logo dating it to before the modernized logo used after 1920 or so. There is another flat tin with the older logo that is slightly different in proportion and has a zigzag border around the design seen on this tin.
Lucky Strike Canister – This type of canister would usually sit on the counter in a store where it would serve as both an advertisement and dispenser for the product. This canister uses the R.A. Patterson logo.
Lucky Strike Flat Cigarette Tin – This flat tin would hold 50 cigarettes and can also be found in a Christmas version. There is another flat 50 tin that has a slightly different design.
The tins above tend to be fairly common and usually can be acquired on eBay, Etsy, or Ruby Lane from someone at any given time. They vary in price but tend to be from $5-30 with a couple exceptions in great condition being worth $50 or a little more.
The rarest Lucky Strike Tobacco tin is the one below and it can be worth hundreds of dollars because it was produced only for a couple of months when the white packaging for Lucky Strike was first introduced and then tins were discontinued and cigarette packs became dominant.
This is the rarest and most valuable of Lucky Strike Tobacco tins it was produced in the early 1940s just before cigarette packs replaced these tins and the unrolled tobacco for good.
Note: My focus here is on the Lucky Strike tins in particular, but for those searching for information on cigarette packs you can look here, for more on ads used to promote Lucky Strike there is a great collection here.
