On August 23rd, 2019, a net54 member made a post about this Nap Lajoie (Throwing) with an upside-down Factory 649 Overprint that he recently acquired. He went on to say the card had been in an old collection, stored in an attic for 80 years, along with other T206s.
There was a bit of skepticism at first as this would be the first upside down Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 Overprint known if it was indeed genuine. My initial thoughts were that it looked good, but there were a couple things that gave me pause. First, there were a ton of Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 Overprints printed. It would be somewhat surprising for the first known upside-down overprint to finally surface now. Secondly, anytime a new rare back or oddity find features a Hall of Famer on the front, I tend to look at the find with increased scrutiny.
Along with some healthy skepticism, I had another thought: The placement of the overprint looked to be an exact match with the Factory 649 overprint on the Greminger Brown Old Mill (below).
Another member soon posted on the net54 thread saying that he had also seen the card in person at a recent card show and felt it was legit. Then I received an email from my friend Pat Romolo who brought up some additional corroborating evidence that had not occurred to me.
My immediate reaction was everything about it looked good to me and the 649 op is about where I would expect it to be. For a while now I have thought for whatever reason the sheets were printed off center from top to bottom with a much larger top border and if that was the case then the op is about where it should be.
If T206 sheets had the huge top border like the Young and Stahl above, it would perfectly explain the placement of this Factory 649 overprint on the Lajoie, as well as the one on Greminger.
On September 20, 2019 the original poster returned to say the card had been authenticated by SGC and was featured in the current Wheatland Auction. As you can see, SGC declined to mention the upside-down overprint on the label.
The auction closed on September 30, 2019 with a hammer price of $4,720.
