I'm pretty sure there are at least a few collectors of this set here - Tareyton Cigarettes Henry set. The first 70 or so cards were not difficult at all, but completing the set has been a bear.

My wantlist sat at 5 or 6 cards needed for a long time. I slowly picked those up, one at a time, over a period of years. The scan below shows the last 6 cards I've gotten, the one in the upper left being the final one I needed to complete the set. I spotted it in a lot of 38 cards on ebay and just received them yesterday.

I've talked with a few folks along the way that agree that there are some very tough cards in this set. I think nobody knows for certain, but I am pretty sure that the consensus is that these are the toughest. At 79 cards in the set, a prime number that obviously doesn't fit on a sheet, there might be some single prints? Corner sheet cards?

Does anybody here know? The ATC does not allude to any SPs and I don't have an NSB -

The two toughest for me were "Paints dog's eye black" and "Selling chances to see "Kave Man"", but I know there are other short prints as well. I don't think the "Playing music with his feet" is as scarce. In general, having seen a bunch of these over the years, I can tell you some cards surface a lot more frequently than others. However, I've never done any formal analysis of the set to exactly determine which ones are scarcer or see what the patterns are. As there are six different backs, there might be some subgroups by back, certain ones that are more or less common. It would take someone to put together a spreadsheet & compile information from various collectors to see if any patterns emerge.

However, as I have my set done, don't really like the set that much, all I have to say is that all that research sounds like a tremendous project for someone else to do...

Yes, Bob - you're right, Dog's eye is tough one too. As I was going through the whole set, I saw a card or two that wasn't in the last 6 shown, but were tough. Is there no explanation extant for the shortprints?

Great job in finishing this set, Mark! You're my type of collector, someone that perseveres for years on a set until it is finished.

My guess, and it is certainly only a guess as I have no formal research or documentation to verify this, was that the T78 series was issued over a period of time in different groups. Might possibly have been groups of 25 or 50, as the British Henry series (Wix, Kensitas cigarettes) were issued in those counts. Anyway, according to this theory, some groups were produced more heavily and/or some subjects were used in more than one group. Different production runs and/or overlap in subjects would 1) make some subjects very common and others much scarcer, and 2) would account for the odd total number for the series (79).

An alternate theory of mine regarding the total count is that there were 80 planned, but one withdrawn for some reason as happened with the T53 Cowboy Series (49 cards instead of 50 as one was withdrawn).

I prefer the first explanation as it better accounts for the varying levels of scarcity but as I said, without data, I'm just guessing all the way!

This is a set that somehow captured my fantasy and I still don't know why. Henry was not one of my favorite cartoon characters - as a matter of fact, I kinda didn't like the guy, but the simple discovery of humor in the cards is a little infectious, and I really like the card stock.

Bob, your theory is interesting - I've always wondered about how these cards were packaged and issued. If I'm not mistaken, Herbert Tareyton cigarettes, even in the '30s were sold in soft packs, so I can't imagine the cards being slid between the cellophane and the pack as that would obscure the advertising on the product package.