03 The 1960 Armour set Part 1

Next lets take a look at the 1960 Armour set. The 1960 coins are the most prevalent of the 3 years of Armour coins. There are 20 different players depicted in this set and there are 3 accepted variations (Aaron, Drysdale and Malzone) and lots of interesting colors. This set also included what is thought to be the rarest armour coin - Bud Daley. Like the 1959 set , the 1960 set breaks into two groupings shown in the Table below. The Aaron group (white lines) come in 7 common colors including red, red/orange, light blue, royal blue, lime green, dark green, yellow. The second group, the Allison group (grey lines) come  in common colors of red/orange and yellow. The other major issue in the 1960 set is determination of condition. Several of the Aaron group cons, especially the Mantle are found in significantly higher % with defective back rims, or more precisely with 25 to 50+ % of the back rim missing. We will discuss this further later.

Here is an advertisement done to promote the coins in 1960:

Towards the end of the summer, Armour offered 10 coins for a dollar and a few proof of purchases. Here is a copy of the envelope that the coins came back in:

Lets take a look at the common colors which are all available as well in translucent and in some cases nearly transparent variations. I know of no examples of trans red.

Next come the rare colors which include bright orange, navy blue, slate blue, aqua, blue grey, medium green, mustard yellow, dark yellow. These are shown below along with one of a kind Conley  salmon , Aaron brownish and Crandall 1959 light yellow.

Top: salmon, red/orange, yellow, dk yellow, mustard yellow

Middle: Red, red/orange, bright orange, trans red/orange, brown

Bottom: yellow, trans yellow, pale yellow (like 1959) 

Top: dk green, med green, lime green, trans lime green, trans med green

Middle: Navy Blue, Royal Blue, lt blue, trans lt blue

Bottom: slate blue, grey blue, aqua

Salmon is a rare unusual color. Since it exists for Conley and Boyer (see zoom below) the tendancy is to label it a allison group color and proclaim that all the allison group should exist in salmon. Maybe, but I'm not sure yet because a salmon Malzone BRS exists and I have also seen a sflayank Mantle coin in this exact color , so maybe salmon exists for both groups but is very rare for both groups..

Next lets look at the player varations. Aaron exists as both "Braves" and "Milwaukee Braves" (MB)and Malzone exists as "Red Sox" and "Boston Red Sox" (BRS). MB and BSR are considerably more rare.

The last variation is Drysdale which exists as L.A. and L.  A. with anoticably larger spread between the L and the A. These are the so caller condensed and spread variations Below is a mustard yellow spread (left) and a yellow condensed (right).

 .....to be continued..........................