This will be the first in a series of articles where I delve into the research of Pat Romolo. Pat has been studying T206 plate scratches and print flaws for years. He was one of the first (if not the very first) collectors to recognize the importance of such identifying marks. I personally find his work incredibly clever and illuminating. In this and the articles that follow, I’ll attempt to explain what makes these tiny print flaws so significant to our understanding of the T206 set.
If you take a very close look at one of your T206s, you may notice some things you hadn’t previously. Every T206 has it’s own unique characteristics. Some of the more common traits we look for are centering, registration, and boldness of color. All of these are examples of “factory attributes”. In other words, these elements of a card’s appearance are due to the way the card was printed at the factory. Other aspects of a card’s eye appeal such as corner and surface wear, paper loss, writing, and creasing are all examples of “post-factory attributes”. Print marks are factory attributes that go a long way towards helping us understand the printing process.
Many of the little marks and flaws on a T206 are unique to that particular example, but not all. Some were printed on multiple cards, leaving a fingerprint (if you will) that can help us better understand the printing process. Perhaps more importantly, these print marks and print flaws help us define a timeline for when each back was printed.
Today we’re going to take a closer look at this little red dot on Ed Walsh’s uniform. The first step is to spot the print flaw. The second is to look at a library of scans of the same pose to determine if this particular print flaw exists on just one card, or many. In the case of Walsh’s red spot on his uniform, there are indeed multiple cards that exhibit the mark.
The table below shows the results of a survey Pat conducted. The number on the right is the total amount of cards Pat examined, and the number on the left is how many of those cards had the red spot on the uniform. A couple of things stand out immediately. First, the red spot is very rare. Pat surveyed over 400 copies of Walsh’s T206 and only found 8 examples that featured the red dot.
Upon closer examination, something else sticks out. All 8 of the cards with the red spot appear on cards with 350 backs (with the exception of the Old Mill, but we’ll get to that in a moment). None of the backs that were printed at the beginning of the 150-350 Series have been found with this particular print flaw. No Hindu, Sovereign 150, Piedmont 150 or Sweet Caporal 150 backs.
It’s not a surprise to see an Old Mill back sprinkled in with the Piedmont 350 and Sweet Caporal 350 backs. It has long seemed likely that Old Mill backs, along with Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 25 were the last two backs printed in the 150-350 Series. What is interesting is the lack of a single example with either an El Principe de Gales or Sovereign 350 back.
We already knew that Sovereign 350 was printed at least slightly before Old Mill because Kid Elberfeld’s Sovereign 350 Portrait still has him with New York, whereas his Old Mill pictures him with Washington. Nonetheless, it’s a nice bit of corroborating evidence. In that same vein, the fact that Pat couldn’t find an El Principe de Gales back with the red dot supports the growing consensus among collectors that EPDG was either the last back printed in the 150 portion of the 150-350 Series, or the first back printed in the 350 portion.
If you own a copy of Ed Walsh’s T206, I hope you’ll go find it and see if you happen to have a copy with the red spot. As we can see from the table, it’s a long shot (something like 2% chance), but if you do have one, please contact me and tell me about it!
