Tag: blog

T206 Piedmont Factory 42: Light Blue v.s. Dark Blue Backs

Charley O’Leary with dark blue Piedmont Factory 42 back

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.

Reulbach PSA 5 with dark blue Piedmont Factory 42 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.

Reulbach PSA 5 (mk) with light blue Piedmont Factory 42 back
Ruelbach PSA 5 with a Piedmont Factory 42 back that is neither light blue nor dark blue, but rather somewhere in the middle

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

Cycle 460: Overlooked and Undervalued (Part Three): Cycle 460 v.s. American Beauty 350 No Frame

This week I’m going to be taking a look at how the Cycle 460 subset compares to the American Beauty 350 No Frame subset.  T206resource.com has American Beauty 350 No Frame as the 15th scarcest back in the T206 set, and Cycle 460 as the 17th.  It’s important to remember that back scarcity lists such as the one posted on T206resource.com are an attempt to list the backs in order of aggregate scarcity.  In other words, this list is simply saying less American Beauty 350 No Frame backs exist than Cycle 460 backs.

Attempting to compare the overall populations of these two backs is a little bit tricky because the checklists are of such dissimliar size.  As mentioned in Part Two of this series, the Cycle 460 Subset consists of 109 different poses, while there are only 37 poses in the American Beauty 350 No Frame checklist.  What this means is that there are 2.95 times (but I’ll round it up to 3x for simplicity’s sake) more poses in the Cycle 460 subset than in the American Beauty 350 No Frame Subset.  So, in order for these two backs to have a similar total population, the average individual American Beauty 350 No Frame pose would have to be about 3 times as plentiful as the average Cycle 460 pose.

My Hypothesis:

That 3:1 ratio actually sounded about right to me before I began to research the Pop Report.  I expecting to find a ratio at or around 3:1 and it wouldn’t have surprised me to find that it was even higher (meaning that Cycle 460 backs are scarcer than American Beauty 350 No Frame).  Let’s take a look at the table below to see what the actual results look like.

Links to checklists, courtesy of t206resource.com:

Cycle 460

American Beauty 350 No Frame

Explanation of Research*:

In Part Two of this series, when comparing Brown Hindu Populations to Cycle 460 Populations, I had to use two different poses of the same player.  This is because there is no crossover between poses in the Brown Hindu and Cycle 460 subsets.  Brown Hindu backs were printed exclusively on 150-350 Series subjects in 1909 while Cycle 460 backs were printed in 1911 and feature only poses from the 350-460 Series, 460 Only Series, and the Super Prints.

The research for this article is a bit more straightforward, because we can look at a single pose rather than two different poses featuring the same player.  36 of the 37 poses in the American Beauty 350 No Frame Subset were also printed with a Cycle 460 back**.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use PSA Pop Report data for all 36 poses.  Most of the poses that were printed with an American Beauty 350 No Frame back were also printed with an American Beauty 460 back.  Because PSA used a generic “American Beauty” label for a number of years, it’s impossible to get reliable Pop Report data for the players who were printed with both backs***.  This meant I had to use just the poses in the American Beauty 350 No Frame Subset that were not also printed with an American Beauty 460 back.  That left me with the 15 poses in the table below.

As you can see, the PSA Population of American Beauty 350 No Frames outnumber Cycle 460s 148 to 65, for a ratio of 2.28:1.  This falls short of the 3:1 ratio required for the total Populations of each back to be roughly equal.  I was expecting to find the Cycle 460 Population marginally scarcer than American Beauty 350 No Frame. However, the results strongly indicate that American Beauty 350 No Frame backs are indeed scarcer than Cycle 460 backs.

*Throughout this series of articles, I have used only the PSA Pop Reports to test the hypothesis.  I chose to do this for a couple different reasons.  First, the PSA Pop Report is a little easier (and quicker) to use when checking a number of different players with the same back.  Secondly, there can be some confusion on the SGC Pop Reports when a player has one pose that was printed with a Brown Hindu back and another pose that was printed with a Red Hindu back.  The same holds true for American Beauty 350 With Frame & American Beauty 350 No Frame.  I wanted to have data that was completely uniform and I didn’t want to use any entry that included any ambiguity.

**The lone exception is Simon Nichols batting, which was pulled from production before Cycle 460 backs were printed.

***In a previous article entitled “Understanding the American Beauty backs: T206 American Beauty 350 no frame (Part 3/4)“, I used both the PSA and SGC Pop Reports in order to make an educated guess at the total graded population of each pose in the American Beauty 350 No Frame subset.

Cycle 460: Overlooked and Undervalued (Part One)

It seems to me that Cycle 460s don’t get the respect they deserve.  Over the last few years, I’ve felt that I was seeing Cycle 460s less often than the other “mid-tier” backs such as Hindu, Piedmont Factory 42, and American Beauty 350 No Frame.  So I decided to do some research to see if my observations were supported by the Pop Reports.

In this series, I’ll be focusing on the scarcest of the “Mid-Tier Backs”, that is:

Tier 1 Backs:
  • American Beauty 460
  • Cycle 460
  • Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42*
Tier 2 Backs:
  • American Beauty 350 No Frame
  • Brown Hindu

In my opinion, there is a clear divide between these 5 backs** and the backs above and below them in terms of scarcity.  There is a large gap in scarcity and value between any of these 5 backs and Carolina Brights, which is significantly scarcer and more valuable.  Likewise, I feel there is a gap below these 5 backs before you get to Tolstoi and Sovereign 460.

A couple of weeks back, I published a two-part article which gave an overview of the “Mid-Tier” Backs, which can be read by clicking the links below:

A Look at the “Mid-Tier” T206 Backs: Tier 1

A Look at the “Mid-Tier” T206 Backs: Tiers 2 & 3

Here are the back scarcity rankings from T206resource.com.  This is a really well put together list, and it’s a great place to start.  I think collectors as a whole have overlooked Cycle 460 and it’s my contention that it needs to move up four or five rungs on this list (and others like it).  I’d also move Sovereign 460 down a couple rungs, but I agree with the vast majority of this list.

Before I get into the research, there are a couple of points I want to address:

First, not all of the mid-tier backs are easy to analyze.  American Beauty 460 is an odd subset because there are 12 poses that are quite easy to find, while the rest of the poses range from tough-to-find to near impossible.  This makes is hard to compare American Beauty 460 to Cycle 460 backs, which have a much more even distribution.  American Beauty 350 No Frame offers a different challenge in terms of comparison.  The AB 350nf subset contains only 37 cards, which is 34% the size of the Cycle 460 checklist (109 cards).

In an aggregate sense, the two backs may have similar scarcity.   However, when looking at specific poses, there will typically be two or three times as many cards with AB350nf backs in the Pop Report than Cycle 460s of the same pose.  This makes it tough to compare Cycle 460 and AB350nf, but I tackle that challenge anyway in Part Three of this series.  In addition, Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42 backs have not been catalogued very well by PSA or SGC over the years, so neither Pop Report is of much use in researching this back.

Secondly, the way the PSA and SGC Pop Reports are set up makes it easy to research certain things but difficult to research others.  For instance it’s difficult to get accurate PSA Pop numbers for a Cycle 460 Chance Yellow Portrait, because PSA used a generic “Cycle” label for a few years, so it’s impossible to know which of those are Cycle 350 and which are Cycle 460.  You run into the same problem for all the poses that have both AB350nf and AB460 backs.  The SGC Pop Report presents a different challenge.  It is easy to tell an AB350nf from an AB460 because the former will be labeled “1910” and the latter “1911”.  However, if a player has two different poses and one was printed with American Beauty 350 With Frame and the other was printed with American Beauty 350 No Frame, it will often be impossible to differentiate between the two in the SGC Pop Report.

Using Pop Reports in an attempt to prove hypotheses can be a little problematic because not all cards in existence have been slabbed, and not all slabbed cards correctly indicate the back.  However, I feel that if you compare two like subject groups and the sample size is large enough, Pop Report data can be very accurate and useful.  You’ll see in Part Two of this series how I use just PSA Pop Report Data and I am able to prove my hypothesis without any doubt due to the sample size and the results of my research.

In this series, I am attempting to answer the following questions:

  • “Which of the Mid-Tier backs is the scarcest?”
  • “What is the order of scarcity for these 5 Mid-Tier backs we are looking at?”

Please stay tuned for the rest of this series:

  • Part Two:  Cycle 460 v.s. Brown Hindu
  • Part Three:  Cycle 460 v.s. American Beauty 350 no frame
  • Part Four:  Cycle 460 v.s. American Beauty 460

*Ideally there would be a Part Five, where I compare Cycle 460 to Piedmont Factory 42, but the lack of Pop Report Data available for Piedmont Factory 42 means I have no way to present any meaningful findings with regard to that back.

**I also think Sweet Caporal 350-460 Factory 25 belongs somewhere in this conversation, but the lack of data available makes that impossible.  Additionally, the fact that collectors don’t care too much about this back makes them fly under the radar even more.

A Look at the “Mid-Tier” T206 Backs: Tier 1

There is a lot of confusion and misinformation out there about what exactly constitutes a “T206 Rare Back”.  If you do an eBay search for T206s right now, you’ll find dozens of listings using the word “Rare” to promote a card that really isn’t.  If you’ve been collecting T206s for a number of years, you probably have a pretty good handle on the respective scarcities of the various T206 backs.  Like most aspects of the set, the best way to learn the intricacies of the different backs is by handling a bunch of cards and spending a little bit of time most days looking at online listings and auctions.  For me it took 4 or 5 years before I felt like I had a good understanding of aggregate and relative back scarcity.

This two-part article will be more helpful to new collectors than seasoned ones, but I think there is a little something for even the most advanced collectors.  For collectors who are just becoming interested in the rare and mid-tier backs, the Back Scarcity Rankings that can be found online can be very helpful, but they only tell part of the story.  These lists are designed to show you which backs are the scarcest, in an aggregate sense.  For the most part, they deliver very useful information.  For instance, it’s very important to know how rare a Uzit or Lenox back is, so that if you happen to find one, you will know that you should try to pick it up because it might be years before you have another shot at one.

However, those types of scenarios are more pipe dream than reality.  The more likely scenario is something like this:  Someone posts a bunch of T206s on ebay.  Most of them have a Piedmont back, but one has an American Beauty 460 back and another has a Tolstoi back.  Going by the Back Scarcity Rankings, you’d assume that the American Beauty 460 would be the card to acquire (assuming you can’t get both).  But in reality, it could go either way.  There are common American Beauty 460s and rare Tolstois.  In this article, I’ll attempt to shed some light on relative scarcity and scarcity within each back subset.

These are the “Rare Backs” of the T206 set:

  • Brown Old Mill
  • Brown Lenox
  • Broad Leaf 460
  • Drum
  • Uzit
  • Red Hindu
  • Black Lenox
  • Broad Leaf 350
  • Blank Back
  • Carolina Brights

There is a pretty big gap between the rarity of Carolina Brights and the next rarest back.  I believe Cycle 460 is the next rarest back (and I will delve further into this in a couple weeks) but you could argue for American Beauty 460 as well.

Here are the “Mid-Tier” backs, separated into three tiers based on rarity.  Within each tier, they are listed in alphabetical order:

Tier 1:

American Beauty 460
Cycle 460
Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42

Tier 2:

American Beauty 350 No Frame
Brown Hindu
Sweet Caporal 350-460 Factory 25

Tier 3:

American Beauty 350 with frame
Cycle 350
El Principe de Gales
Old Mill (Base Ball Subjects)
Sovereign 150
Sovereign 350 Green Apple
Sovereign 460
Tolstoi

Tier 1:

American Beauty 460

There are either 74 or 75 cards in the American Beauty 460 Subset*.  The subset is comprised of poses from the 350-460 Series as well as the 460 Only Series.  In an aggregate sense, AB460 is one of the three scarcest Mid-Tier backs, but the individual distribution has an odd twist to it.  12 of the poses are pretty easy to find, while the others range from scarce to near impossible-to-find.  These 12 poses are plentiful in comparison to the others:

-Crandall with cap
-Devore
-Duffy
-Ford
-Gandil
-Geyer
-Hummel
-McGraw glove at hip
-Pfeffer
-Sheckard glove showing
-Tannehill on front
-Wheat

These 12 poses tend to sell for less than other American Beauty 460 poses.  There are some AB460 poses that haven’t come to market in a number of years,  Prices can be very strong for the rarest front/back combos.

Cycle 460

There are 109 poses in the Cycle 460 Subset.  This is in my opinion the scarcest of all the Mid-Tier backs.  This article is meant to set the stage for a number of more research intensive pieces that will be published in the near future.  Look for an in-depth series on Cycle 460s to come in the next few weeks, entitled “T206 Cycle 460 Backs: Overlooked and Undervalued”.  In this series, I will show in detail, why I believe Cycle 460 to be the rarest of all Mid-Tier backs, slotting in just behind Carolina Brights on the overall Back Scarcity Rankings.

Cycle 460 backs appear to follow a normal distribution.  That is, some poses are more plentiful than others, but it is likely just due to chance and the randomness of which cards survived all these years.

Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42

This is clearly one of the scarcest Mid-Tier backs, but it is hard to study them because the grading companies have not recorded them until recently.  Someone who has been collecting backs and paying attention to the market for the last 20 years would have a much better idea of their aggregate scarcity than I do.  My strengths lie in analyzing the data that is available to us, mainly in the form of Population Reports.  I feel that Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42 backs are slightly scarcer than Brown Hindu, but it’s probably very close either way.  Piedmont Factory 42 is the least scarce of the Tier 1 backs, and Brown Hindu is the scarcest back in Tier 2.

A big thanks to the guys at T206resource.com for the use of their invaluable checklists.

*There is a question of whether Ames Hands Above Head was actually printed with an American Beauty 460 back or not.

The T206 Eddie Collins With Bat Proof

The Collins Proof above is probably my favorite T206.  This unique card walked into a card show in New York in the 1970’s.  It was brought to the show by a relative of someone who worked directly with proof production for the T206 and T3 sets.  No one knows why this pose didn’t make it into T206 production.  The Portrait is an iconic pose, but this With Bat pose would have been a great complement to it.

A copy of the 1994 REA catalog which featured the Collins Proof – The first time it had been offered publicly

The card speaks for itself, but the story of who has owned it over the years adds to its mystique.  Rob Lifson, who went on to run Robert Edwards Auctions (REA) purchased it and sold it soon after to Bill Mastro at a different show.  Mastro recognized that it was an unissued pose and jumped at the chance to buy it for $17.  He told Lifson that it was unissued only after he had bought it.  Realizing the significance of the card, Lifson decided to re-acquire it.  He had to give Mastro $2,000 in trade, but he left the show with it.  He then sold the proof to high profile collector Barry Halper for $2,500 when he got home.

In 1994, Halper consigned the Collins Proof to Lifson to sell in REA’s January Auction.  The minimum bid was set at $50,000 and the lot received just one bid, selling for a post-juice $56,000.  The new owner was none other than actor Charlie Sheen.

The two legendary baseball card collectors who have owned the Collins Proof

In 2000, Leland’s auctioned off the card, and it sold for $24,930.  This time, it was purchased by Keith Olbermann, and it resides in his collection to this day.  In 2011, Olbermann wrote the following in his MLB blog:

“I’d like to thank him (Charlie Sheen) belatedly for the T206 Collins Proof card, by the way.”

In the below issue of The Trader Speaks, the question of whether the Collins Proof was a more significant card that the T206 Honus Wagner was posed.  Today most collectors would opt for the Wagner if given the choice, but there are a few who would prefer the Collins.

There’s no way to know for sure what the Collins Proof would sell for in today’s market, but it would not shock me at all if it sold for low-to-mid six figures.

I’d like to thank Keith Olbermann and t206resource.com and for the use his/their scanas well as info used from the article entitled “The Olbermann Proofs” and Rob Lifson for his summary of the history of the Collins Proof, which can be read on the Full Count Vintage Baseball Card Forum here.

The “Dark Ink” Connection Between The T206 Sweet Caporal Factory 649 Subset, 150-350 Old Mill Subset, and the Elite Eleven: Part Four

It’s probably not possible for us to ever know with certainty how many different print runs made up the 350 portion of the 150-350 Series.  I think it’s pretty clear there were at least three distinct stages, but beyond that it gets really tricky to say anything with certainty.

I was chatting with my friend Steve Birmingham about this topic recently.  Anytime I have a question the printing processes used for T206 production, I ask Steve.  He mentioned my observation about the Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 and Sovereign 350 connection that I wrote about in Part Two of this series.  I noted that only 10 of the 34 subjects in the SC 150/649 Subset were printed with Sovereign 350 backs.  This was a departure from Old Mill, Piedmont 350 and SC 350/25 & SC 350/30 print runs which used the majority of the 34 subjects that make up the SC 150/649 subset.

Ten subjects with overlap between SC 649 and Sov 350fg, and only three of those seen with dark ink. That very clearly speaks to different print runs with different sheet layouts each time.

I have to agree.  Printing the Sovereign 350 sheets was clearly not as simple as just reusing the layout from an earlier 150 Series sheet.  This knowledge may get us closer to understanding the printing process, but it probably creates more questions than it answers.  The fact that they used just ten SC 150/649 subjects for the Sov350 print run may mean that it was relatively easy for the printers at ALC to swap poses in or out of a sheet.  If this was a common practice, it would be nearly impossible for us to recreate or make sense of the sheet layout for the 350 portion of the 150-350 Series.

I let that idea marinate for a little while, thinking to myself that this puzzle seemed not only immense, but daunting.  I had to chuckle when I got Steve’s next email.  It seemed we were feeling the same way:

Every time I get into this stuff I realize more and more that Heitman was incredibly right to call it “the Monster”.   It looks simple enough, 524 cards with different backs, then you realize that some “common” backs on some cards are anything but common.  Then you try to pin it down to sheet sizes, and print groups, and with outliers, and a handful of obvious changes during a run it becomes clear that even a few print groups aren’t really enough.  And that it’s more like 12, maybe more.

I also wanted Steve’s opinion on what created the “Dark Ink” and “Washed Out” cards that I’ve discussed earlier in this series.  Much like the questions I have about print layouts, there aren’t any easy answers.

Why they’re darker probably won’t be easily solvable.  One possibility is that the adjustments to the art between 150 and 350 were intended to save on ink- trivial for one card, but over several thousand it adds up. I can see ATC asking for and getting a volume discount, and also ALC cutting a few corners to preserve profits.  Of course, looking at Gilbert that makes no sense!  The red in the sky is far more extensive, so they didn’t save much by messing with the art.

Of course, the opposite could be true in a couple ways.  ALC could have requested that the cards look more vibrant, and darkening colors and adding a bit more of brighter ones would do that.  But it might have cost extra, so they could have decided to tone it back down later.

I don’t really buy the worn plates concept for the more washed out ones.  It’s possible, but they’re pretty common, and I doubt they’d run for that long on worn plates.  It’s more likely another deliberate adjustment to the art.  And a more likely cost cutting move.  Plates only lasted so long, especially when using stones. So they would have needed regular replacement.

I imagine I will spend more time in the future trying to make sense of it all.  Thanks as always for stopping by to read my articles.  And thank you yet again to Steve for helping me understand the printing process used by ALC in the production of T206 cards.

The “Dark Ink” Connection Between The T206 Sweet Caporal Factory 649 Subset, 150-350 Old Mill Subset, and the Elite Eleven: Part Three

I spent the first two parts of this series talking about the “Dark Ink” cards from the 350 portion of the 150-350 Series and what we can learn from them.  Now, it’s time to move on to the “Washed Out” cards.  These are cards that look a bit “fuzzy” and have muted colors.  They exist with the following backs:

Old Mill

Piedmont 350

Sovereign 350

Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 25

Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 30

El Principe de Gales stands out as the only 150-350 Series back that was printed during the 350 portion of the print run to not appear above.  EPDG backs were printed directly after the 150 Print Runs and before all other 350 Backs (Old Mill, P350, Sov350, SC 350/25 & SC 350/30).  There are not any “Washed Out” images with 150 Series backs, and there are none with EPDG either.  What this means is that the Washed Out images appeared later on in the 350 Print Runs.

The accepted theory on the “Washed Out” images of the 150-350 Series is that the printing stones became worn over time, which produced the images we see above.  The colors are less sharp and the lines are less defined on the “Washed Out” images than the cards printed in 1909 at the beginning of the 150 Print Run.

This is where the Elite 11 come into play.  The following 11 poses are known as the “Elite 11”:

  • Dahlen Boston
  • Ewing
  • Ganley
  • Jones, Tom
  • Karger
  • Lindaman
  • Lundgren Chicago
  • Mullin horizontal
  • Schaefer Detroit
  • Shaw St. Louis
  • Spencer

These 11 poses follow a similar pattern.  They were all printed with EPDG backs and Piedmont 350 backs, before being pulled from production.  They don’t exist with Old Mill, Sovereign 350 or Sweet Caporal 350 backs.

They don’t appear to have been pulled from EPDG production.  I’ve read that theory in the past, but I don’t believe there is enough evidence to support such a conclusion.  The only Elite 11 pose that is truly scarce with EPDG back is Bill Dahlen Boston.  He may have been pulled from production before the EPDG print run concluded, but it could also just be a result of a normal distribution variance.

“Elite 11” Piedmont 350 Germany Schaefer

So, What do the Elite 11 Have to do With This?

We know they were printed briefly at the beginning of the Piedmont 350 print run, and then quickly pulled.  I’ve made the observation over the last few years of collecting these cards that none of the Elite 11 Piedmont 350s have either “Dark Ink” or the “Washed Out” look.  They all look just like their Piedmont 150 and EPDG counterparts.

What this means is there were multiple distinct print runs for Piedmont 350 backs.  Initially, the fronts looked similar to Piedmont 150s, but by the end of Piedmont 350 production, some of the fronts looked “Washed Out”, and others were printed with “Dark Ink”.

I don’t know how many distinct print runs it took to create all of the Piedmont 350s, but I think it’s pretty clear that it was at least three.  The early run produced the Elite 11 poses.  They look the same as the Piedmont 150s of those players.  The “Dark Ink” and “Washed Out” sheets came later.  At this point, I don’t know if there is any way to tell which came first.  I used Piedmont 350 backs to make the point about the Elite 11, but the same patterns hold true for most of the other backs we have been discussing.

150-350 Series Old Mills exhibit the three distinct print qualities that I noted in Part One of this series.  That points toward at least three print runs.  The same appears to be true of Sweet Caporal 350/25 and Sweet Caporal 350/30.

Where Sovereign 350 Stands Out

It appears to me that 150-350 Series Sovereign 350s have two distinct print qualities.  There are some Sovereign 350 fronts that look just like 150 fronts, but most Sovereign 350s look at least a little washed out but with normal colors.  My guess is the majority of Sovereign 350 backs were printed towards the end of the 350 portion of 150-350 Series production when the printing stones were worn down.

The “Dark Ink” Connection Between The T206 Sweet Caporal Factory 649 Subset, 150-350 Old Mill Subset, and the Elite Eleven: Part One

When you’ve handled enough T206s, certain patterns start to take shape.  It starts by noticing something small that seems a little odd on a certain card.  Most of the time these slight variations between cards are due to the inexact nature of the printing processes and don’t point us toward a larger pattern.  However, after you see the same oddities a few times with the same card, or a group of cards that can be linked together in some way, that’s when some interesting patterns can start to take shape.

Typically the articles that I write are completely researched before I publish them, but this group of articles will be a little different.  With this subject matter, it’s hard to “prove” anything, so I am content to just throw the idea out there for now.  One huge obstacle in trying to put together the pieces of this puzzle is that these 150-350 Series Old Mills are scarce.  Connecting the dots necessarily requires putting faith in the conclusions drawn from examining a small set of examples.  But, I figure I have handled more 150-350 Old Mills than just about anyone, so I feel qualified to throw out a new theory regarding them.  I’ll be interested to see what other people think, and I will continue to delve into the topic in the future.

This series of articles is going to take a look at the three backs noted above, but it feels natural to start with Old Mill, even though they were printed last.  I’ve studied T206s with Old Mill backs more extensively than any other back, and it was looking at Old Mills that lead me down this train of thought.

There are three distinct print qualities that I have observed on dozens of cards from the 150-350 Series Old Mill Subset:

1. Clean, crisp images that look more like 150 Series images than 350 Series
Sullivan Old Mill that is neither overly dark nor “washed out” in appearance
2. “Dark Ink” cards that are much darker and more heavily inked than other cards
Schlei Catching Old Mill with a noticeably darker appearance than a copy from the 150 Series
3. “Washed Out” images that lack the clarity of #1 and tend to be a bit lighter as well
Overall Portrait with Old Mill back and a “washed out” appearance

These three distinct “looks” of Old Mills from the 150-350 Series lead me to one obvious conclusion, and one that may not be so obvious.  First, because these Old Mills can be classified into three distinct groupings, clearly that means each group was printed separately.  What it doesn’t tell us is whether there is any pattern to be found.  It’s very possible that different runs on the press were just inked to varying degrees, which created the different results that we can see above.

I think there were three or more different print runs for 150-350 Series Old Mills.  I also think the different print runs were made up of a different set of players/poses on the sheets.  There seem to be some players that were not printed on the “washed out” sheets, and likewise with the “dark ink” sheets.  In Part Two, I’ll delve into the “dark ink” 150-350 Series Old Mills and we’ll see what patterns and theories we can infer from them.

A Look at the T206 Red Hindu Subset: Part Two

In the first part of this two-part series (which can be read here), we looked at the Red Hindu checklist, as well as a little background on which print groups the poses come from.  We also identified the 12 Red Hindu poses which are more common than the other 34 poses.

For Part Two, I went through the SGC and PSA Population Reports and compiled all the data into a single table.  Unfortunately, the results aren’t as easy to digest as I would have liked.  The PSA Pop numbers are all very straight-forward, but the SGC results are sometimes ambiguous.  When a player is featured on a 150 series card with a Brown Hindu back and also a 350-460 series or 460 series card with a Red Hindu back, it can be impossible to read the SGC Pop Report with certainty.

The table below shows all of the Hindu entries for Mordecai Brown.  As you can see, the top listing is a generic “Hindu” listing which could really be any combination of his three poses that have Hindus backs (Portrait-Brown Hindu, Cubs on Shirt-Brown Hindu, & Chicago on Shirt-Red Hindu).  Since we have no way of knowing which poses are actually out there with the generic label, I just recorded the range of possibilities in my combined Population Report table.  We can see from the Brown Pop Report that 4 Red Hindus are listed.  Then there are the 5 Hindus listed under the generic heading.  It’s very unlikely that all 5 of those would be Red Hindus as they are rarer than the Brown Hindus.  So, even though we can’t be sure, it is safe to assume that of the possible 5, probably only 0, 1 or maybe 2 are Red Hindus.  So on the far right of my combine Pop Report Table, where it says “between 10 & 15” for the Mordecai Brown entry, it would be safe to assume that there are 10,11, or 12 graded Mordecai Brown Red Hindus out there, and likely not 14 or 15.

Without further ado, here is the combined Pop Report Table for Red Hindus.  You’ll notice that Mathewson, McIntyre and Reulbach each have a combined Pop of zero.  These are the 3 poses which should exist (or at least have been printed with) Red Hindu backs, but have not yet been confirmed per T206resource.com.  Elberfeld and Rucker also have combined Pops of zero.  These 2 poses must have been confirmed by T206resource in raw form at some point.  You’ll also notice that I have highlighted the Exclusive 12 poses in Purple.  Most of them would stick out anyway due to their high Pop Report numbers, but it makes it easier to identify them.

As evidence by the above table, there are some truly scarce Red Hindus.  It seems very likely that Mathewson, McIntyre, and Reulbach were printed with Red Hindu backs, but all copies have been discarded and lost to history.  On top of that Elberfeld and Rucker each have Pops of zero, and 5 other poses have Pops of exactly 1 each (Chase black cap, Doyle with bat, Murphy with bat, Street catching, and Willis throwing).

A Look at the T206 Red Hindu Subset: Part One

Red Hindu is the 7th Scarcest T206 back, slightly more plentiful than Uzit, and slightly scarcer than Black Lenox.  The Red Hindu subset is a small one, featuring only 43 known cards, although according to T206resource.com‘s checklist below, they believe that 3 additional cards should exist, which would bring the total to 46 cards.

The Red Hindu subset consists of players from three separate print groups:

  • The 350-460 series (also referred to as Print Group 3)
  • The 460 Only Series (also known as Print Group 4)
  • The “Super Prints” (aka Print Group 5)

Interestingly, all 34 poses that exist with Broad Leaf 460 backs also exist with Red Hindu backs (with the possible exception of Mathewson Dark Cap, McIntyre Brooklyn & Chicago, and Reulbach No Glove Showing – though all three were likely printed with Red Hindu backs).  You’ll notice that the Red Hindu Subset lists 46 poses.

Red Hindu shares an interesting phenomenon with the American Beauty 460 subset.  Most of the poses above are extremely scarce, but 12 of them are much more common.  This pattern was first written about by Ted Zanidakis who dubbed it “The Exclusive 12” in a post on net54baseball.com.

These twelve poses are significantly more plentiful than the others on the list above:

  • Crandall with cap
  • Devore
  • Duffy
  • Ford
  • Gandil
  • Geyer
  • Hummel
  • McGraw glove at hip
  • Pfeffer
  • Sheckard glove showing
  • Tannehill on front
  • Wheat

Finding one of these twelve Red Hindus is fairly easy, but if you are looking for a Red Hindu that is not a member of the “Exclusive 12” it could take years for a copy to come to market.  In Part Two, I’ll use the PSA and SGC Population Reports to show the disparity between Exclusive 12 populations and the rest of the Red Hindu subset.