lost Mail contacts during upgrade

I upgraded from Tiger to 10.6.8 and in the process lost most of my mail contacts. I tried copying the file (from my Tiger backup) Howard Pollack/Library/Application Support/Address Book into the new (Snow Leopard) Howard Pollack/Library/Application Support/Address Book, but to no avail. It appears that Mail has access to the contacts, but I'm not entirely sure about that- it my be picking the email addresses off of the stored old emails (I don't know if it does that)? I'd appreciate any help I can get as I'd hate to have to hand enter all the addresses. If I boot from the hard drive (Tiger) and open Address book from the back-up all the addresses are still there. Thanks for your help. -Howard Pollack