49 New 1959 Vernon variation

Its been awhile since my last blog and quite a few of you have asked whats up. Loading these does take a little work and you just need to be motivated to write them. Basically I just ran out of what I thought were important Armour coin information tidbits that I wanted to pass on to you fellow collectors. A remarkable find has spurred me to write up blog 49, but while I'm doing that I will catch up on other new information as well.

Answering Mail

Some of you have asked why I don't typically answer questions left on the blogs. The answer is simple. This blog platform provided by Google free of charge allows folks to leave comments or questions but does not trigger me that a message has been left. So I would have to make a daily visit to every blog to stay completely up to date. If you want to leave a message better email me at philgarrou@att.net. If you want to leave a comment for everyone to see keep doing it this way ...thats fine.

1955 Trans coins 

Armour Al, SFLA Yank and a few others have written discussing the existence of transparent coins.

In blog 47 we looked at 1960 colors and indicated that most of the colors came in transparent variations. As a life long chemist my conclusion is that he transparency, translucency and opaqueness is due mainly to the quantity of filler (usually SiO2 or sand if you will) that is added to the plastic mix).

In blog 45 we looked at the so called " dk red trans" 1955 coins where not only can you read the back of the coin (looking through the front) you can see what appears to be precipitated (ppct) red pigment particles. This is somewhat hard to see in a picture on the internet, but clear as a bell when holding the coin up to the light. It appears that this same phenomena can be found for the 1955 navy coins and Armour Al reports that he has a near complete set in this "cosmetic" variation. They are certainly not new colors and not something that I would have expected Bob Lemke to have added to the Std. Catalog of BB Cards (my friend Bob passed away in 2017 ).

So for now, lets simply conclude that for sure dk red and navy 1955 have coin examples that show this strange precipitate phenomena, other 1955 coins can be found in varying states of transparency/translucency/ opaqueness. They are not new colors or variations. If you don't agree...speak your piece.

Rare reds show up in TX 

In the late fall of 2019 OPC baseball in TX put up a rare find of 1955 reds. While we all know that reds are a common color these were reds mainly of the 55 rare variations. In blog 42 we already discussed the fact that many of the variations are rarely seen in red or orange. One could presume this occurred towards the end of the molding runs and they were running out of red dye (red + yellow = orange), but whatever the case, we knew they existed (see blog 33) but were hardly ever seen.  Well OPC found a lot that had at least 5 each of both Mantle correct variations and put them up for sale on EBay. I personally did not buy any because the seller put over inflated  prices on them while their condition appeared, to this knowledgeable observer,  to be no better than vg or PSA 5. Some had back edge chips and all had real rough back edges and wear on the coin faces. This collector does not pay $1500 for a coin like that even a red correct Mantle.

Armour PSA registry sets repositioning. 

A shout out is due to ChiSox Tony whose 59 set has moved into the top 5

Part of this set repositioning is due to sets being sold off. For instance it appears that Outlaw sports has sold off most of his 1955 collection and my old friend Freasle's widow ( see blog 21) has  finally put his sets up on the Heratige April 26th auction.  If I can remember I will update this blog with final prices in a few days.


NEW 1959 VERNON Variation

With those tidbits behind me whats so important that It spurred me to write this first 2020 blog ??

Well Armour Al sent pictures of a 1959 Vernon coin in a dark yellow shade (not the pale yellow that is standard for 1959 coins) As you can see below it has Vernon as a member of the Senators not the Indians ! The back shows a pitchers 1958 W / L record that is not filled out. Maybe that is because Vernon was not a pitcher  but rather an infielder as it clearly says on the coin.

Vernon was traded to the Red Sox for the 1956 and 1957 seasons and then Cleveland for the 1958 season. 

The best guess we can come up with is that the coin designers were asked to produce a prototype set sometime before the 59 season. The designer obviously screwed up and produced this Vernon coin/s (who knows how many were made) This obvious error was caught and never made it into commercial distribution.

I checked with the Godfather of Armour Coins Doug Stultz, who is enjoying his retirement, and Doug says "Never seen one like that before"  .

I never cease to be amazed about how much new information we can dig up about 60+ year old coins.