26 1959 set from speckeled and Opaque pale green

After picking up some coins from Hazel home (see blog 25) I was able to finish off a full 1959 set composed of the pale navy speckeled subset and the pale green opaque subset.

As we have discussed in the past, the speckeled or "confetti" subset exists in  aqua, pale navy and darker navy color variations. These are all highly transparent and highly sought after due to the colorful confetti that appears to have been added to the plastic mixture

. With a light behind them they look like this:

 

Very little info is available on the opaque pale greens and aside from this blog you may never see them listed. Whereas the "regular" common 59 greens are highly translucent, these are a lighter green color and absolutely opaque and many of them come with a cream swirl. A close-up of the pale greens are shown below. You can see the swirls on Banks, Turley and Podres.

 

 



The dk greens, regular medium greens and pale green are compared for Banks below.

 

 

While the pale green appears to be a 10 coin subset, the dk green appears to be available in all 20 coins. They are rare, but not as rare as the dk reds or dk grey/blues.  



 

Lastly here is a close-up photo of the key Aaron and Banks coins.

25 Hazel Home Haul

Frequent readers at this Armour COin site know that I try to keep everyone up to date on major "finds" Well therethis is one your going to love. It appears that Lisa and Parker from Hazel Home Art and Antiques in Wausau Wisconsin picked up some old games at a local garage sale. SOunds like something any one of us would do right ?

Well one of the games they acquires was Michigan rummy which they say is also know n as Tripoly. In addition to this board game they found a show box of "colorful plastic chips" that were being sued with the game...YES you guessed it a shoe box full of 1959 Armour Coins.

 

Seems that Lisa ad Parker hit the internet to better understand what these were and of coarse found this blog.

 

 

They had loads of red and orange and blue and green but also had concentrations of pinks both pale and dark) , light green opaques which often come swirled and loads of both aqua and navy transparent  blues with "confetti" mixed in (what we called speckeled). Here are a few shots of what they had available

 

 

Aware of what they had they did not offer them cheaply, but became a great source for those of us who are Armour coin color collectors. I'm sure they made a bundle on this garage sale pick up...good for them. A few of them are still listed on Etsy if your interested.

24. PSA grading and new SFLA 1955 MAntle Colors

The reason for PSAs existence is that it provides a neutral 3rd party evaluation of the condition of our materials (in this case Armour coins) so that they can be bartered or sold to others. This prevents arguments over differences of opinion which are inevitable.

The one thing that we demand in return for our payments to PSA is CONSISTENCY. Unfortunately this is not always the case. In blog #4 we discussed he problems we had with PSA grading 1960 Mantles with partial back rims as PSA 8's. They stood by their grading and did not change a thing causing problems to this day with over graded '60 Mantles some of which are missing as much as 50% of their back rim.

The question South Florida, I and others asked at that point was "Who the hell is setting up the grading standards here ?" We even had Bob Lemke Editor of the Std. Catalog of BB Cards chime in to Joe Orlando ands tell him that "coins with partial back rims should not be graded higher that VG"

[ DON'T BELIEVE ME - CHECK OUT THE 2008 STD. CATALOG 1960 ARMOUR COIN DESCRIPTIONS]

Anyway time has passed and now we face the opposite issue. Grading of the Armour coins by whoever is now doing it ( Orlando will not confirm whether there has been a change in grader - but all the evidence points to that) has dropped one full grade across the board. That is to say coins that were being graded PSA 8 are now getting 7s and in some cases 6s. This has made 9s and 10s near non existent. This is also happening to the big time Armour coin graders like Seaweed (check out his latest listings) .

So what evidence do I have for this ??

Well lets look at the at the grading over time. Fortunately, or unfortunately for PSA, I keep copies of the population reports and we can look at those to see what they tell us.

In table 1 we see the cumulative population of  '55 Armour coins on given dates and the % of each grade. In table 2 we see coins submitted between certain dates and their percentages. From this data we can calculate an average grade for that period of time.  

So from daa1 to Jan  2010 the average coin grade was a little over 7.9 and from May 2113 to June 2015 the average grade was 7.1. Looking at the numbers the PSA 9's went from 27% all the way out to 2013 and then from 2013 to today have dropped to ~ 8%. You can also clearly see the increase in 6s and 7s.

I have not seen this trend in regular sized topps cards but have seen the exact same thing appear in larger card formats like Hostess panels and Bazooka panels etc. Maybe the same grader ??

If you have seen the same thing in your Armour grading (and my numbers show you have, send Orlando an email telling him to fix the problem !

NEW Mantle Colors for 1955 Incorrect

South Florida has sent some great shots of Mantle coins you don't often see. So here are two that I had never seen until now. The Mantle incorrect tan and the Mantle incorrect Azure (next to a navy blue for contrast)

 

I have been working with Armour collector Al (lets  call him Armour Al and will be reporting on our findings in 1959 coin colors soon.....................

23. More on 55 Rare Colors

The average Armour collector thinks the rare coins are the black ones. Those who read this blog and keep up with what's offered on EBay know that not to be the case.

I personally have a near complete black set that is missing only Kuenn condensed and Mantle correct Lor R. If you have either of those and want to deal with me let me know.

I've had one guy request $1500 for the correct Mantle L or R in essence saying it is the rarest coin in the rarest COLOR. All I can say is <<<NOT GOIN TO HAPPEN>>> and NO it is not.

Just check out EBay and you can find 30 - 40% of the 35 different blacks on sale at all times. Are they worth 100 - 200$ each....that's up to you to decide.

We have discussed the rare 55 colors before for instance in blog 8.

I just got a batch back from PSA and waned to share some of the colors with you as well as correct some of the color naming. More on recent PSA grading in the next blog

Looking at the ppt below:

The top row shows the common and rare blues. The aqua and navy are the commons.

I have showed you the Rosen "sky blue" before. Sky blue is actually a real name from paint color charts.

The Jackson is what we will now call "AZURE" blue. At first I had two of these (Turley and Rosen) but on a recent visit with Armour seller "Seaweed" came upon at least 9 of these color. I bought 6 and he sent the remaining 3 off for grading . They are now up there on EBay being offered at several hundred dollars each. Are they worth that ?? Certainly they are 10X rarer than the blacks....Value as I have said many times is up to you.

As they say ...."when the apocalypse comes only 3 things have value: food...medicine and bullets ! " 

Row 2 shows several tans. How many tans can you find for sale...anywhere ??

Row 3 shows a opaque gold Berra (my only gold) The ultrarare "Peach" Klu an orange Kuenn correct to compare it to and what I was calling the Ultra rare "Olive" Kuenn. I have also seen a Reese in this same color and recently picked up a Trucks. I checked the color charts and this is better called "yellow green" [yes this is also a real paint color]
 It is very distinct from the lime green 1960 color...just not the same.

Anyone with tan, peach, sky blue, azure or yellow/greens let me know.

By the way we are now the number one Armour site on Google..................