This is an article I’ve had in the works for quite a while. Almost a year ago, I began writing and researching, but then ran into a bit of a snag.
If you look at enough Piedmont Factory 42 backs, you’ll notice that the blue ink tends to be either very light or very dark. I’d read a few threads on the subject on net54, but beyond the observation that the ink level varied, I didn’t recall seeing any conclusions drawn. It’s a minor variation, and maybe not worth spending too much time on. But then again, at one point Sovereign 350 Green Apple backs were thought to be just a slight color variant of the Forest Green Subset.
So, a few months ago I decided to look into the Piedmont Factory 42 subset to see if I could find any patterns with regard to the dark ink v.s. light ink phenomenon. I asked a couple friends to help me research. Adam Goldenberg was nice enough to send me scans of his collection of Piedmont 42s, and Pat Romolo offered to dig through scans on Card Target for me. Going into the research phase, I was hoping there might be some sort of pattern we’d be able to discern. Specifically, I was wondering if certain players were printed with only one of the two back types.
The graphic below shows the difference between the light blue and dark blue backs.
The “research phase” was over almost before it started. I got an email from Pat saying that he had begun to look at scans and he didn’t think there was a pattern. I meant to take a look for myself, but never got around to it. Some time passed, and I completely forgot I had started working on this article. A few weeks back I found it while cleaning up the drafts on my site and decided I should finish it. After all, even if there is no pattern, that still answers some questions.
So, I delved into the scans that Adam had sent me and past sales on cardtarget.com. What I was looking for was simple. I wanted to find one pose that was printed with both a light blue and dark blue back. I did find that, but I found something else as well. I went into the project thinking that the backs were almost always either dark blue or light blue. However, after scrolling through dozens of these backs, I realized that the intensity of the blue actually varies quite a bit.
Below is the “smoking gun” of my research. One Reulbach with a dark blue back and one with a light blue back (and another that’s somewhere in the middle). This proves there is no easy pattern where one pose always has either a light blue or a dark blue back.
After looking at a bunch of scans, I’m left with a couple thoughts. First, the darkness v.s. lightness of ink varies quite a bit more than I expected (and more than you’d think from reading the net54 threads). In my opinion, there are light blue Piedmont Factory 42 backs, dark blue backs, and every shade and variant of blue in between. Secondly, the fact that I never found any consensus online about the dark blue backs v.s. light blue backs makes a lot of sense. I’m sure other collectors have looked into this topic in the past, and just never posted anything about it, because they didn’t find any interesting patterns.
Despite the fact that I don’t have any exciting news to report, I figured this topic was still worth posting. I’m sure I won’t be the last person to notice the differences between the light blue and dark blue backs and wonder if there is a pattern. Hopefully, I can save some of those people some time.
Sources:
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=137166
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=128227