30. 1955 Armour Coin Ad found

 

My EBay search on Armour coins this week turned up a 1955 Armour ad for their 1955 coin promotion. It is shown below. I confirms a lot of things about the 1955 set and offers some humerous comments about the coins and how Armour was trying to get kids to collect them.

 

 

It may be a little hard to read so I will repeat some of the content.

 

"Made of genuine plastic" (remember this was the early days of plastics in consumer products)

 

 "...the size of a silver dollar"

 

 "24 different coins" no surprises here, obviously no variations are listed cause back then this was not being done on purpose like it was in the 1980s.

 

" six different colors including "deep red, dark blue, light blue, bright yellow, orange and green"

So this would be our common 6 or red orange, yellow, navy, aqua and pale green. Why all the other colors came up is still a mystery.

 

- "Don't miss out on this chance to own and trade these picture-coins" that's a unique description !

 

- "These aren't flimsy cards. They are big, solid lasting coins"

 

- "They don't tear or wrinkle"

 

- "...jingle them in your pocket (That's where the edge chips came from - damn you Armour advertising man), use them as play money or paste the complete set on a board and hang them on your wall" (Oh God please don't ! )

 

- "Offer to go to the store for mom today and bring home a pack of Armour franks" (Yes they really said to do this ...Maybe Soupy Sales was their ad man !...only old timers will understand that reference...look it up on google)

 

Any of you actually remember this ad ?...I was only 6 and don't recall to much that far back.....

 

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 For those of you following the selling prices on rare color coins, A black Mantle correct in PSA 9 just went for over $2800. One of the two black coins I need, but too rich for my blood...

 

 

 

 

29 Welcome to the Dark Side

As we have noted several times what the 1959 Armours lack in super rare players or variations is made up for in rare colors.

In blog 26 we focused in on the confetti and pale green opaque subsets. This blog we will focus on "the dark side"

Specifically lets look at red, blue and green. I have compiled this data with the help of fellow collector Armour Al.




When it comes to the Dk reds we have 6 diff players between us and all of them come from the Aaron subgroup (the 10 coins that do not exist in pink) . This is still a work in progress till all 10 players show up, but for now we are pretty sure that the dk reds are an Aaron 10 coin subset like the pale blues and the grey/greens. They are compared to a regular red Aaron in the pic below. The pic does not show the striking diff between colors. The dk red is much, much darker than the regular red.

The dark grey blues are shown below compared to the 1959 navy blue (left)  and royal blue (right). All 10 coins of the Aaron group are known to exist and so far we have 3 of the Antonelli group (Antonelli, Banks and Thomas) between us. So we are once again predicting and extrapolating that all 20 coins exist in this color variation.

I showed you one of the Dark Greens in blog 26 comparing it to he pale green opaques. The dk greens also exist in the full 20 coin color variation subset. They are shown below compared to the regular 1959 green and the pale green opaque.

 

 

 So the natural question is "What about orange and yellow ??

One of the self imposed rules I have been following in term of color variations is that I need to see at least 3 of them for them to be an official color variation. Otherwise we might be looking at a swirl  that has been completely mixed to give a new color. 

Anyway there is a so called "burnt orange" or much darker orange  but so far only the Aaron has shown up. Also there may be a darker yellow (like the regular 1960 yellow) I have the Ford and Al has the Thomas , but I need to see one more before I will talk about it as an official color variation.
In the pic below the regular pale yellow 1959 is on the left and the ultra rare darker yellow is on the right.

 

 

28 Cappo de tutti cappo

For those few of you left in the world that have not seen the Godfather, this loosely translates as Boss of all the bosses or if you will King-of-Kings. Certainly when it comes to Armour coins that title should go to the rarest player in the rarest variation in the rarest color and that is the recent key coin of the "Comstock Load" the silver Mantle correct L-R without question the rarest Armour coin ever found . It was recently graded and resulted in and 8. All I can say is WOW and congrats the acquirer who sent me the following pic to share with the rest of you.

I doubt I will see this topped in my lifetime.

Coming in tied for second place are the correct orange and red coins owned by SFLAYank which are actually up on EBay as I write this for $10K each. Again, to my knowledge one of a kinds.

 

 

27 The Comstock Lode

It was 1859 when national headlines read that Silver was found in Comstock Nevada and miners rushed to that area to get their share.

The Armour coin equivalent to the Comstock Lode just happened a few weeks ago when, lets call him, "4seasons" from upstate NY  put a silver Pee Wee Rese up for auction on EBay. The winner shelled out$750 or it and then sent it to me to authenticate just in case he had to return it as a fake. The only other silver I have seen on EBay in the last 17 years was a silver Berra in the Drier collection auction [ see blog # 12 "Auctioning of the Drier Collection"]

 If your interested in seeing a fake one see blog 19 Hi Ho Silver..........

The good news for the buyer and seller this time  is that the coin passed all my testing and has thus been labeled authentic by ArmourPhil.

I took pics while I had it in my hands.

Scratches on the front and some collapse of the cheek from lack of plastic filling the mold. Back shows 3 divits on he right again from lack of plastic and some more scratches. This will not be a high PSA grader, but it, to the best of my ability it is REAL.

It is also opaque, but that's OK since both of the silvers owned by renowned collector Doug Stultz are also opaque.  

After contact with 4 seasons it appears that at least 2 more silvers are in existence and believe it or not they are a correct Mantle L-R and the correct two words Trucks

 

 

The Trucks has pot marks on the front and back and the mantle is either swirled with red or red is showing through a bad paint job. Don't pay any attention to the fact that they appear to be different shades. More than likely that is a lighting issue. I took my pics above without direct light. I am not vouching for the authenticity of these two since I have not had them in my possession.

 

Seems old "4 seasons" also has some golds (he had one up for sale a week ago) . One of you veteran readers wrote to say that this was puzzling (meaning weren't they probably fakes) , but in reality in finds like this, rare colors usually show up together. 4 of my tans came from one person as did 4 of my golds, 5 of my azure blues and 2/3s of my transparent dk red/flecks.  The rare colors just seem to be clustered in bunches, maybe from a mail in offer (although I have never heard of one for 1955) or maybe from diff colors being produced in different regions.

 

 

Whoever wins the Mantle, hope they let me put it through my tests and authenticate. This would be the biggest find in armour coins...ever.  

 

Note added 05/14/2016: The auction for Mantle went off last night with 3 bidders and the winner shelled out ~$3300 for this certainly one of a kind Armour coin. Since the bidding quickly jumped to $3K earlier in the week I was not in the bidding at all...

 

Note added 5/29:  I have added below a close up shot of the Mantle coins sent by the winner. The swirl is absolutely gold meaning there ARE gold correct Mantles out there and confirming the theory that South FLA and I have about the gold and silvers being made at the same time. 4 seasons Ron, the seller, has also put the 4th and final silver up for sale - Harvy Haddix. Interesting that 3 of the 4 silvers, i.e Mantle, Haddix and Trucks are coins with variations and in all 3 cases the corrected variations are the ones that show up in silver.    

 

For those keeping track the Reese brought $750, the Mantle a whopping $3500 and I hear the Trucks went to ~ $350. Nice payday for Ron. !