Huggins and Scott recently sold this very interesting trio of mis-cut Piedmont 350 backs. The lot, which ended on February 8, 2018, sold for a final price of $840 after the juice. Though they were not advertised as such, these three cards all came from the same sheet.
I don’t have firsthand knowledge of the provenance of these cards. However, I believe they may be Printer’s Scrap. This means that they were not included in packages of Piedmont Cigarettes, and instead left American Lithographic Company with one of the printers, or were discarded and saved by someone else.
The fact that they are so severely mis-cut is the first clue. By itself, that doesn’t really tell us much though. The second clue is the condition of each card. They are all in very nice, uniform shape. The third clue is the presence of both Seymour and Cicotte in the group. The pink print marks below connect Seymour and Cicotte, proving they were right next to each other on a Piedmont 150 sheet. We don’t know for sure that the layout remained the same for Piedmont 350 sheets, but it’s another piece of circumstantial evidence, all of which points in the direction of these three cards being printed on the same sheet. To read more about the Seymour-Cicotte connection, and Piedmont 150 sheets in general, check out the links at the bottom of this article to other articles I’ve written on the subject.
The final clue is that all three cards came from the same collection. It would be hard to imagine these three cards looking as similar as they do without them having been stored together for many years. In the same vein, it would be hard to imagine them being released in packages of Piedmont Cigarettes and eventually making their way into the same collection without exhibiting different levels of wear. However, there’s always the chance that these three cards were inserted into one carton of cigarettes and a few packs were purchased by the same smoker.
There are other examples of similar cards floating around in the hobby. They are often referred to as “no name” cards because they are mis-cut in such a way that the caption has been cut off. If I saw just one of these cards by itself, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it was Printer’s Scrap. Though they are severely off-center, they are certainly factory-cut. The vast majority of cards that we refer to as “Printer’s Scrap” will exhibit rough, hand-cut edges because the cards were scrapped as a full sheet, and cut up by hand. There’s no way to know for sure, but my guess is the sheet these three cards were printed on did not pass quality control (for obvious reasons) and the cards were never inserted into packs of Piedmont Cigarettes.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll delve deeper into these topics. Writing about these three cards (which may or may not be scrap) made me realize I haven’t written anything about the topic on this site yet. So, next week’s article will be an overview of T206 Printer’s Scrap. I’ll define the term, talk about all the different kinds, and show off some really cool examples. Two Sundays from now, we’ll take a look at other examples of T206 sheet-mates that have survived together all these years.
Links and Sources:
Pat Romolo’s T206 Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Project (Part 1/2)
Pat Romolo’s T206 Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Project Part 2/2
What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part One
What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part Two
What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part Three
What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part Four
https://hugginsandscott.com/cgi-bin/showitem.pl?itemid=25159&catid=135&lotno=412