‘The holy grail, the best of the best, the rarest of rare’
3 Strikes pocket tobacco tin sells for CA$55,000
A rare 3 Strikes pocket tin sold for CA$55,000 ($64,900 with buyer’s premium) at Miller & Miller’s Soda, Tobacco & General Store Advertising auction on Sunday May 25, 2025.
An extremely rare and desirable 3 Strikes pocket tin, discovered in near-perfect condition during a house renovation, hammered down at CA$55,000 at Miller & Miller’s Soda, Tobacco & General Store Advertising auction Sunday May 25, 2025.
“I’ve been a dealer of nostalgia for over 50 years and this is only the seventh one I’ve come across,” says Ed Locke, of Renfrew, Ontario. “And there hasn’t been a new discovery in 15 or 20 years. It’s significant.”
“This is the holy grail, the best of the best, the rarest of rare,” says Christine Blaus, Miller & Miller’s specialist and consultant, who is a retired lawyer and a collector herself. The vertical, flip lid, 3 Strikes pocket tobacco tin featuring a period-uniformed torso of a baseball player, is according to Blaus, “one of the most important, most elusive and one of the finest pieces of Canadian tobacco history ever found.”
Lot 1070 - Rare 3 Strikes Cut Plug Pocket Tobacco Tin
Skyrocketing past its estimate of $9,000 to $12,000CA, the tin is also what’s known as a ‘cross collectible’, meaning it appeals to collectors of tobacco items, as well collectors of baseball memorabilia. It’s two for the price of one you might say. More bang for your buck.
Pocket tins got their name from the fact they fit perfectly inside a shirt pocket.
One of the seven 3 Strikes tins known to Locke appears in Bill and Pauline Hogan’s 1979 book Canadian Country Store Collectables, which describes it as “perhaps the earliest of the known Canadian pocket tins” and “also the rarest.” The tin pictured in the book, says Locke, “was in good condition, but not nearly as good as the one sold in the Miller & Miller auction”. The one in the book was sold to a collector in the United States, resold to someone else back in Canada and then resold again to another American.
Bill and Pauline Hogan’s 1979 book Canadian Country Store Collectables
The book describes the 3 Strikes Tin as “perhaps the earliest of the known Canadian pocket tins” and “also the rarest.”
“Canada produces some of the best tins out there,” Locke says. “Americans like Canadian pocket tins and see them as being just as good as the American tins.”
The demand for certain Canadian pocket tins is definitely strong, as was also recently demonstrated at Miller & Miller’s March 2nd Petroliana & Advertising auction. Three of the rarest tins in that sale - the Taxi, the Gold Dust and the Torpedo - hammered for $5,500, $5,500 and $5,000CA respectively. A Master Mason pocket tin sold for $2,000. Along the lower edge of the Gold Dust tin, Imperial Tobacco had printed ‘worth its weight in gold’ - referring of course to the tobacco itself, not the tin. But that’s all changed now.
The above tobacco tins sold at Miller & Miller’s March 2nd Petroliana & Advertising auction.
The 3 Strikes pocket tin from Miller & Miller’s May 25th auction was discovered only 200 metres from the original Erie Tobacco Co. factory that made it. The consignor also found old signs that appeared to have once been the sides of crates from the company. When the consignor first moved to the Kingsville, Ontario area many of the original tobacco barns were still standing, along with some of the older homes which likely once housed company employees.
The Erie Tobacco Co. was founded in 1900 and was one of many tobacco farms located in what was then the highly-saturated Ontario tobacco belt. One of the company founders was John Bruner (1852-1910), who was a fruit farmer, but also dabbled in livestock, wheat and the fishing industry.
The tobacco factory was almost 22,000 square feet over three floors, employed 50 people and initially churned out 1,200 pounds of chewing tobacco a day. The company operated for eight years, between 1900 and 1908, then closed for four years, likely due to a lawsuit launched by a neighbouring merchant who claimed the tobacco company was emitting noxious and offensive odours and stinking up the town. The lawsuit was dismissed but the merchant appealed and the company was forced to stop production. When their factory lease expired in 1912 they appeared to move locations, but records past 1912 are sketchy. Eventually, the Erie Tobacco Co. was taken over by Imperial Tobacco Co. of Canada.
The above pocket tobacco tins are also included in the May 25th auction at Miller & Miller. Click each to view.
Chewing tobacco was popular in its day. In the U.S. in 1890, three pounds per capita of it was chewed every year. It was popular in Canada too, but anti-spitting laws enacted in 1904 in cities like Toronto reflected a growing public distaste for the habit.
The condition of the 3 Strikes tin sold on May 25th is so exceptional it puts it heads above the other known examples. “When you get something rare in a desirable category and in very, very good condition you just never know how much it will command,” says Locke. “Is a collector ever going to get a chance to own another again? Maybe not. That’s why these items bring whatever the market will bear.”
Four of the other known examples of the 3 Strikes tin Locke has run across were “rusted from the inside out” since they were found with tobacco still inside and the moisture from it caused the tins to rust over time.
There are also American pocket tins featuring baseball players, which are highly valued by collectors, including the Bambino, showing a silhouette that resembles Babe Ruth, who was nicknamed ‘the Bambino’. “It’s not super rare,” Locke says, “but it is hard to find.” There’s also the Ty Cobb tin, which Locke categorizes as “very rare, in part because the player is a recognizable Hall of Famer”.
Given its rarity, its condition and its cross collectability, the 3 Strikes pocket tin sold at Miller & Miller has caused a stir among collectors far and wide.
“Some collectors didn’t even know it existed,” says Blaus. “It’s a unicorn.”
By Diane Sewell
Diane Sewell has been a writer for more than 25 years, producing feature stories for some of the country’s top newspapers and consumer magazines, as well as client newsletters and commissioned books.
Sale Information:
Soda, Tobacco & General Store Advertising
May 25, 2025 | 9am EST
Enjoy this story? Feel free to share it using the links below: