2018 has been a hell of a year when it comes to rare 1955 colors and it sure ended that way. It seems EBay seller Grizzley Dick had this accumulation of armour coins that he had picked up a flea market near Lake Georg NY years ago (actually in the last century...ha..ha..ha) . A few days before Christmas he started selling them after studying these blogs. That in itself would not be startling, but what was startling were the colors that he had. Seems his hoard had no pale green or navy blue or lemon yellows or oranges or blacks. It was made nearly entirely of dark greens, yellow greens and dark reds. Once again rare colors grouped together coming from the same location. Really the only common color he had was aqua.
Up to this point the only known yellow greens (early on called olive green) were Reese, Kuenn condensed and Trucks (1 word) . At last count we now have at least 19 examples, some of which are shown below. There appear to be two shades with one a little more yellow than the other. In the last row you can see Vernon in both of these shades. Another interesting factoid is that there were no rare variations. Another Mantle was sold in another lot by Grizzley. These are the only 3 yellow/green Mantle Incorrects known to exist, to the best of our knowledge and brings the total number of 1955 Mantle incorrect colors up to 21 including silver (but no gold)
A grouping of the Dk Greens is shown below. Notice how uniform all these rare colors are.
You may notice the dk green Mantle incorrect ( a color I have been hunting for 20+ years).
The other main color Dick had was what we have called dark red transparent. That's right no regular cherry reds, no dark reds but ALL dark red "trans" which if you have been reading these blogs you know are semi transparent and when you hold them up to light you can see what appears to be undissolved pigment particles.
I put Haddix dk red trans and regular opaque dark red on my light table and got the following pics to try to show you the difference.
Armour Al indicates that he has found similar "trans" coins in navy and lime green. Since both SFLAYank and I both have a least 1 navy trans coin, this has led to a call for a more thorough examination of our collections to see if any other coins appear this way...Check for results in a few weeks.
So who was the winner of several of these Lake George lots including 2 yellow green and one dk green Mantle ? None other than Armour Al who clearly has become the Armour collector of the year for 2018 !
This now leaves silver as the rarest color followed by sky blue and tan, but as we have seen this year...that too can change with the next major armour coin auction...
