13 The Mastro 1960 Armour Hoard

 Last blog we detailed the 2013 Legendary auction of the Dreier Armour coin sets. I thought there would also be interest in another large lot sell off that happened exactly 6 years ago in April 2007 - the Mastro 1960 Armour coin hoard. This is the source of most of my statistical knowledge on the 1960 set.

Here was their intro to the auction. "Armour began including plastic baseball coins as inserts with meat products in 1955. Because of the nature of the product the items accompanied, the plastic coins made a lot of sense; no stains and no elaborate packaging needed to protect them from the food. This group is from the firm's 1960 edition, which would also be the final Armour promotion of this nature. The 1960 offering included only 20 different players plus three variations. All of the issue's content variations are represented in the assembly, and each player the set (except one, Bud Daley) is included in this giant assortment of 703 coins."
 
 The story was that a worker in the Armour plant filed up the "Armour popcorn tub" (below) with the coins and put them away in his home only to be found 45 years later. Thats the story anyway. [Obviously these tubs (see below) were not for pop corn, most likely for gizzards or something like that)]

Mastro actually listed every coin by color, condition and quantity helping collectors like me look at  what is claimed to be producton at a given point in time.

The Back Rim Problem

This is where we first saw real data on the rim problem. Bad back rims included:  

Mantle (67%)
Aaron   (29%)
Banks   (26%)

Variation ratios:

Aaron - Braves vs Milwaukee Braves = 62/11

Malzone  - Red Sox vs Boston Red Sox = 56/32 (this one seems very high on the variation)

Drysdale - condensed vs spaced = 10/5

Full team name variarions did not show up with rim problems and still never have !

General Rarity

There were 60 - 80 each of the "aaron group" i.e. none were SP or rare.

In the Allison group, Allison, Colovito, Kaline and Mays appear rarer than the others. (4 - 5 each) vs  14 - 23 for the others

From this we also see that Aaron group vs Allison group was 3-4X

Not to much info on color since these were obviously pulled during a run of yellow and green (Aaron group) and red/orange Allison group)

More questions than answers ?

Major questions that come up include:

1.  Were there really no Daleys ? or were these pulled and auctioned off seperately ??

2. If variations were done as corrections to mistakes on the mold, how could a random pull from production (like this supposedly is) result in both variations ??

3. Why 3-4X more Aaron group than Allison group ? Does this hold up on PSA grading population ?

In fact there are consistently 2-3X more Aaron vs Allison graded (removing HOF like Aaron, Mantle, Mays and Banks becaused of perceived value distortions) For instance Crandall, Fox, Triandos (504) vs Pinson, Stuart & Wynn (189).

4. The story is pure BS and we have no knowledge what-so-ever about how the contents of the bucket came about.

For what it is worth here is the complete Mastro listing from 6 years ago this week !.

Aaron/Braves (Yellow-43, Green-19) 29% grade VG due to missing or partial reverse rims; 
Aaron/Milwaukee Braves (Yellow-9, Green-2);
Allison (Orange-4);
Banks (Green-14, Yellow-59) 26% grade VG due to missing or partial reverse rims; 
Boyer (Orange-17);
Colavito (Orange-5);
Conley (Orange-16);
Crandall (Green-17, Yellow-72);
Drysdale/Condensed L.A. (Orange-10);
Drysdale/Spaced Out L.A. (Orange-5);
Ford (Orange-18);
Fox (Green-12, Yellow-55) 5% grade VG due to missing or partial reverse rims;
Kaline (Orange-4);
Malzone/Red Sox (Green-6, Orange-1, Yellow-49);
Malzone/Boston Red Sox (Green-8, Yellow-24);
Mantle (Green-24, Yellow-43) 67% grade VG due to missing or partial reverse rims;
Mathews (Orange-26);
Mays (Orange-5);
Pinson (Orange-23);
Stuart (Orange-14);
Triandos (Green-18, Yellow-64);
Wynn (Orange-17).