Understanding the American Beauty backs can be a challenge, so I’m going to go into detail here and hopefully answer any questions that you may have. As always, please send me a message via the “contact” button if you have any questions or suggestions.
There are three distinct and different American Beauty backs:
-American Beauty 350 with frame (AB350w/f)
-American Beauty 350 no frame (AB350nf)
-American Beauty 460 (AB460)
The three backs represent distinct portions of the T206 print run, and are almost always mutually exclusive. This means that when a certain pose exists with one American Beauty back, it will not exist with any others (there are 19 exceptions to this rule within the AB350nf and AB460 checklists, which I will get to in Part Three).
Pricing:
In general, AB460 backs sell for the most, followed by AB350nf and then AB350w/f. I’ll explain why and talk about exceptions to the rule.
Scarcity:
This is how they rank on the T206resource.com back scarcity list:
Where each back lies in scarcity rankings is largely due to the size of each checklist. It makes sense that there are less AB350nf backs out there than AB350w/f, simply because the latter were printed with 5 times as many fronts. As you can see from the graphic below, AB460 is more scarce than AB350nf despite being printed on twice as many fronts (75 AB460 to 37 AB350nf). The reason for this is that there are some truly rare cards in the AB460 checklist. The same cannot be said for the AB350nf subset.
It’s important to note that this is a broad overview, and that individual cards within these series can range from very scarce to somewhat common. I will go into more detail in the rest of this series, but here is an example to show what I mean:
Gabby Street’s portrait can be found with a AB350w/f back. Gabby Street’s catching pose can be found with a AB350nf back. If you just looked at the overall scarcity rankings, you would assume that the catching pose would be the tougher card to find. In this case, that would be incorrect. PSA lists 8 Street catching with AB350nf backs and only 5 Street portraits with AB350w/f backs.
Stay tuned for Parts 2 through 4 of this series where I’ll build upon this framework by taking an in-depth look at each American Beauty back.
Thanks to Ted Z. for pointing out an error in the first draft of this article.
Thanks as always to the guys at T206resource.com for allowing me to use their checklists.