FULL COUNTER DISPLAY – Country Gentleman Cloth Pouch Tobacco (c. 1939–42) – Liggett & Myers – 12 Pouches

A man didn’t always buy his tobacco from a shelf of bright tins and plastic tubs. There was a time when he laid a dime on the counter, nodded to the clerk, and was handed a small cloth bag with a drawstring pulled tight and a faint smell of cured leaf already rising through the weave. A pack of papers was tucked inside, the change went back into his pocket, and he stepped out into the evening with something honest in his hand.

What you’re looking at here is one of those moments, saved intact.

This is an original Country Gentleman countertop display carton produced by Liggett & Myers in the final calm years before the war and the earliest years of it, roughly 1939 to 1942. These boxes once sat beside the register in drugstores and general stores across the country, their lids flipped open, price printed right on the front so there could be no arguing about it. Ten cents. A fair price then, and a forgotten world now.

Inside are twelve cloth drawstring pouches, just as the factory shipped them. Eleven of them remain matching and sealed, still wearing the same tax stamps they left Durham, North Carolina with more than eighty years ago. Each still carries its original rolling papers, because back then a man might pack a pipe after supper or roll one up behind the shed, and the company made sure he was ready either way.

Those stamps place these pouches in that narrow window before wartime shortages changed everything. By 1943 cloth was gone, prices had climbed, and packaging was simplified to the bare minimum. What survives here comes from the last stretch when materials were still generous and things were made to last a little while.

Country Gentleman was never meant to be fancy, and it never pretended to be. Liggett & Myers sold it as “good, ripe, skillfully cured tobacco… just as nature made it,” and they meant it. The blend was built on air-cured Burley with a touch of flue-cured leaf for brightness, cut fine enough for pipe or paper, and left mostly alone. In its day a bowl would have opened with a nutty Burley core, dry hay and warm grain, a little natural sweetness, and a clean finish that didn’t linger or beg for attention. This was porch tobacco, workshop tobacco, the kind you smoked slow while the world carried on around you.

One pouch from this carton was previously opened and documented in an early Pipe Appeal video as a tribute to this special piece of tobacco history. That pouch has since been replaced with another unopened original Country Gentleman pouch from a slightly later production period. It is original, unopened, and shown in one of the photos, though it differs slightly in size and wear from the earlier pouches. The remaining eleven pouches are uniform, unopened, and untouched.

This is offered as an original piece of tobacco history from a vanished era. Some collectors choose to preserve pieces like this for display, while others enjoy opening and smoking them. That choice is entirely yours. Time and storage naturally affect vintage tobacco, and no guarantees are made, but clear photos are included so you can see exactly what the contents look like. What remains is the chance to experience something most of us only read about now, when a dime still bought a pouch, a moment, and a little quiet at the end of the day.


Details:

-Original Liggett & Myers Country Gentleman countertop display carton
- Originally issued to hold 12 cloth drawstring pouches
-11 matching unopened pouches with tax stamps (circa 1939 to 1942)
- 1 unopened replacement pouch from a slightly later production period
-Pouches include original rolling papers
-Factory marking: Factory No. 42, 1st District of North Carolina
-Period slogan: “Just As Nature Made It”

This auction contains tobacco.  If you live in certain states, you will be unable to purchase this product.