It has taken a month or more to get this post up about a new color variation in the 1955 Armour set, but I was wanting to make sure I was correct about what I was going to say .
Before I start though, we need to go through some basic info that I have gathered on colors.
For years I and the other collectors have tried to find a listing of colors that all of the Armour coins would match. Basically there is not such color chart available that we have found.
It finally came to me that mixing colors into plastic is like mixing paint. If you look at any gallon of paint and look what they are mixing to get the custom color you want, you find that here are 5 basic colors being added. The primary colors of red, blue and yellow and the additional two colors that are used to make the shades - black and white. Those 5 ...that's it.
I stumbled onto the following "app" "Real Color Mixer" which you can load onto your phone from the google store. Basically it mixes those colors in any ratio that you want. I would rather do it on the computer (vs my phone) so I could then take a pic of the resultant color, but so far I have only found this app for the phone and none for a computer.
Anyway, we can now talk about colors, create them in this app and see if they match any known colors.
For instance:
1959 dk pink is 9 red, 30 white and 2 yellow
1959 pale pink is 5 red , 30 white and 2 yellow
(whether its 30 white or 28 white makes little difference, but basically double the red and go from dark pink to pale pink ...)
You can hold up the coin next to the phone and match the color...
More importantly if you send me the composition I can generate the same color on my phone and see if it matches anything that I have.
Everyone struggles with Navy Blue vs Royal Blue (1960) till they hold them side by side in their hand. Well navy blue is straight blue and royal blue is 9 blue, 1 yellow and 2 white
1955 Aqua is 1 blue, 1 yellow and 4 white
1955 red is red
1955 dk red is 9 red and 1 black
Some of you are probably saying "he has to much time on his hands" but ....for me this now makes it all make sense.
the WISCONSIN FIND (At first I called it Minnesota - Mia Culpa)
So with this basic knowledge about color on hand lets look at the Wisconsin find of 2018. It was about a month ago that several EBay ads popped up with what looked like a least (200) 1955 Armour coins. There were near complete sets in red and navy and groups of singles offered by player. Checking them over I found first that none of the lots had any of the rare variations for any player. The Mantle lot of 14 (see below) had reds and yellows and an orange and an assortment of blues. 4 Navy blues for sure and then 4 coins of at least 2 shades
Being accustomed to seeing awful color pictures of Armour coins on EBay I presumed the lighter shade was aqua (though it looked more blue than aqua) which meant the medium shade must be azure ...A color that I need for Mantle. The seller wanted $1299 for the lot but I made him a lower offer since I would have to sell off all the other coins. Looking at his other pics I saw loads of the paler blue coins so they had to be aqua....right ? The only other option was the ultra rare sky blue. I only have one of them (Rosen) so no way all of a sudden someone comes across literally dozens of them...or so I thought.
To make a long story short, the winners of these lots started contacting me and were kind enough to send lots for inspection. The photos below tell the story. 5 different blues showed up. I'm calling the new color Wisconsin Blue for the state of the find.
I separated Wisconsin in the pic from the sky blue because they are close in color ...but when you have them both in your hand they are definitely different. At least 17 of the possible 24 diff players turned up in this color so it is now an official color variation as far as I am concerned.
I have not locked down the exact color compositions yet in the color App, but it just the blue to white ratio. You might think well all of these are just a little off and no two are exactly the same. Not really...below are 10 of the Wisconsin blues that I have had my hands on. As you can see they are all the same color just like all the aquas in my or your collections are the same color.
So how rare are they? Looks like here were 27 of them in this find. That's more than the current number of known silver or gold or olive green or peach or tan that we know of, but who knows whether we ever see a bunch of this color again...so yes they are rare. If you won any of these Wisconsin blue, sky blue or azure coins please send me pics for the blog...ArmourPhil
