Ever since I moved to the Charleston area 4 years ago I've been buying tomatoes called 'Comeback' tomatoes at a local stand. Huck's gets them in local early in the season, and gets them from a grower in the mountains near the SC/NC border during the mid-season and towards the end, then finishes up with local comebacks again. They're good tomatoes, a smaller beefsteak type that fill out a sandwich quite well, red to reddish orange, they can nicely, sauce and roast nicely, and fry up green too.

I've tried to ask if the comeback refers to a growth habit, or of it's a varietal name, but Mr. Huck didn't know. He said he's been buying them for about 50 years and has only ever heard them called comeback tomatoes, although sometimes he sees them as SC comebacks and NC comebacks.

I've looked everywhere online and offline that I can and haven't found them anywhere, so I believe that it's probably a reference to growth habit. I'd sure like to know more about these guys and maybe have some. I'd have saved seeds from the ones I bought last year, but found that many of the tomatoes had seeds starting to sprout when I opened them up and thought that it was probably too late even for the unsprouted ones.

Does anyone have a clue what they might be?

Oh, when he gets them from upstate, they come in green and ripen in the shed, but I can't tell the difference between one from upstate and one of the local vine ripened ones. They seem like they'd make a nice workhorse if they're OP. Of course, seeing as they're market tomatoes they probably are hybrids, but if he's been buying them for 50 years, just maybe...