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STOCK CIGAR BANDS
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Although tens of thousands individual cigar manufacturers were in business in the early
1900s, a much smaller number of companies actually printed cigar bands and labels. Large cigar manufacturers often bought their own customized designs, but for their many smaller customers seeking to keep costs low, printing firms offered a wide variety of less expensive "stock" bands.
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The printers' salesmen carried catalogues containing samples of hundreds
of different "stock" cigar band designs available, ranging from very simple to very ornate,
from plain text or patterns to portraits and pictures. Because "stock" bands were sold to
many different customers, the same cigar band designs were often found on the cigars of many
small, unrelated manufacturers. The exhibits below present a small selection of the many thousands of different "stock" bands that were produced in the early 1900s.
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