Armour certainly told their customers what coins were coming out in any given year but there was never any mention of variations like the Mantle miss-spelling etc. or any indication of the rainbow of different colors that were available.
The first to attempt to "catalog" Armour coins was Doug Stultz. His February 1987 article in Sports Collectors Digest was the first I'd ever seen on the coins. Certainly the first to talk about color rarity and variations. The data in this article was the info SCD used in their price guide (see blog 17)
Although I have never personally met Doug, He and I first traded "food issues" back in the mid 1980s. We finally made contact when EBay started auctioning off Armour coins.
I still get a kick out of reading the article especially where Doug starts off " I don't claim to be the expert, but...." DOUG - you are the expert ! and this blog would not be possible without the info you provided me through the years.
For its historical significance I have scanned and include the article here. Sorry about the quality of the scans, but these are very old pages. Remember to click on the figures to blow them up the size of your screen so you can read them !
NOTE IN CLOSING
The large influx of graded 1955's that happened this past week (~200) is the last of the Dreier collection coins to hit EBay. Armour coin EBay seller "seaweed" won all of the common colors at the auction and just got them back from grading.
