46 New Armour Collectors...Mustard yellow in 1955 ??

Welcome New Armour Collector

Some new 55, 59 and 60 sets have gone up on the PSA sets list under the name Nehe60. His  "all orange 1955 set" says it has an orange Trucks two words and a Mantle correct LorR . SFLAYank checked with Neil and it ends up the orange correct Mantle is just another PSA miss label . The Trucks 2 words orange does seem to be real and if so, it is the only one we know of. Congrats to Neil. Neil promises to put up pics for his 55's soon...until then welcome to the Armour collectors group Neil...

Congrats also go out to collector Noelle4-life who finished off her 59 set and is only a bob Cerv PSA 9 away from a complete PSA 9 or better set. She is currently in the #5 slot right in front of our friend ChiSox Tony and right in back of my all yellow 45th street park set.

Noelle is also zeroing in on a complete 55 set. She is now 3 coins away from the complete 37 in PSA 7 or better ...a significant feat...while she currently resides in 7th place she is only behind myself, auctionfvr (George), and our deceased pal Freasle. Finishing her set could move her up into 4th place.


Super dk yellow a new 1955 shade ??

SFLA has reported 1955 mantle incorrect in a very dk yellow color he says is close to mustard yellow of 1960 sets. In checking my coins I appear to have a very dk yellow Trucks . As of now we're not sure they are the same color. If anyone else out there has similar color coins please let us know.

Below I have taken a pic of (l to r):

1955 lemon yellow....1955 new mustard yellow color

Armour Al has chimed in with a Vernon example so by our rue of at least 3 coins of the exact same color, dk dk yellow mustard yellow) should now become an official color...

 

 

 

45 The Lake George Find

 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...

44. Reviewing 1955 Armour Coin Colors

 

 



Several of you have requested I try to come up with a complete chart of 1955 colors as I did for 1959 colors in the last blog. While all of these colors have been discussed in previous blogs, I have now tried to get all the colors into one chart like my 1959 chart.

I won't go into a lot of discussion on this. By now you know that the common colors for 1955 are Red, orange, lemon yellow, pale green, navy blue and aqua.

 

Certainly the rarest colors include peach, gold, silver, yellow/green (also at times called olive green), tan, sky blue and Wisconsin blue. Hope this is some help to my interested readers

 



Some might catch that I have left out what I have called "dark red transparent"...that's because it is so hard to show this color as a picture that clearly identifies it. It looks just like dr red (especially in EBay pis) . Those that have one know it...when you hold it up to the light you clearly see the individual red pigment particles in the coin. I  currently have 11 different examples of this color so it is real. The only other color I have ever seen like this is one example of navy blue which is Antonelli N.Y....

 

If I have missed any colors let me know...

 

 

43 Reviewing 1959 Armour coin colors

It's been awhile since we looked at 59 colors so I though I'd look at those again. While the 59 set holds the lowest value ( no variations and no Mantle or Mays) of the 3 sets, it is the most colorfull (in my opinion) and has many colors that are very difficult to find. Pale blue and grey/green have always been rare, but recently they have become super rare. Pale oj, pale red, burnt orange, dk yellow, cream and brown  are certainly in the super rare category. There is a separate blog on dk red, dk grey/blue and dk green with the green being rare but the easiest of the 3 to find. The pale green opaques are hard to find and always come with a white swirl. We have confirmed 3 shades of pink as you can see in the chart below and 2...maybe 3 blue shades of confetti.


The color chart below is the best I have done for the 3 years since all the colors look true.

Is the burnt orange really a dark orange to make the full dark set of red, orange, yellow, green and blue ? Your thoughts..should that include dk pink maybe ?

Should another grouping be pale red, pale orange, pale yellow, pale green, pale blue and pale pink ? If so why is the pale yellow so much more common ??

Why are the confetti coins only in blue ??

If your a collector try getting one of each color or a set of all 20 coins each in a different color. In my opinion much "coole" than having a set all in navy or all in orange, but that's just my opinion.

...feel free to comment on which of the rare colors you might have. If anyone has a pale blue Malzone or Cerv...talk to me ...



42 1955 Rare Variations - Grades vs colors

Thought we would take a look at the 1955 non Mantle tough variations and what colors they have been graded in. This data was collected off the PSA sets and by contacting the set owners to input their colors and any other graded examples of these 7 coins that they are in possession of.

We got a pretty good response to this questionnaire so thanks for the input guys/gals...

By the way last check this web page has gotten 67,000+ views...WOW



Feb 22nd  2019 - data update from readers: The following PSA 7s have been reported : Antonelli - pale grn, Guilliam narrow- navy, Jackson - navy, Jensen - navy, Snider black, Trucks - navy

So there have been ~ 193 of these 7 coins graded and we know the whereabouts of slightly greater than half of them. RED appears to be the hardest color to find these 7 coins in.

Hope this data is of some interest to you all ...

41 Armour Al hits the jackpot

 

A large group of 1955 Armour coins went up for auction in September and once again I missed them. This time my excuse is that I was at a family wedding. What was your excuse for missing this lot ??

 



Lets call it the 2018 NY Mantle lot for reasons you'll shortly understand. This lot consisted of 241 1955 coins as shown below

This pic comes to us direct from Armour Al and is not the photo included in the EBay auction. From the auction pic it was very hard to identify exactly what was in the lot. The seller had it up for sale for $3000 or best offer and many of you contacted the seller to see exactly what was in the lot and sort out how to make a bid.

Armour Al immediately made an offer of $2200 which was accepted before  many of you could get your offers in. So exactly what did he get for his money ?

                                      99 orange; 30 yellow; 7 green; 55 aqua; 50 navy blue..... NO Reds ??

By player :

ANtonelli NY 3                              Antonelli New York - 2
Berra - 13                                       Crandall - 7
Doby - 13                                       Finigan O - 5
Finigan Q - 7                                 Ford - 4
Gillliam L or R - 1                        Gilliam L - R - 3
Gilliam tight - 0                            Haddix wide - 7
Haddix - narrow - 6                      Jackson nfielder - 4
Jackson Infielder - 7                    Jensen Reb - 3
Jensen Red - 4                              Klu - 11
Kuenn wide - 5                            Kuenn condensed - 4
Kuenn bats/throws - 4                 Mantle error - 3
Mantle correct L or R - 3            Mantle correct L - R - 2
Mueller - 7                                  Reese - 10
Reynolds - 15                             Rosen - 16
Simmons - 4                               Snider decimal - 3
Snider no decimal - 6                 Spahn - 15
Thomas - 8                                 Trucks 1 wrd - 4
Trucks 2 wrds - 4                        Turley - 10
Vernon 16

A quick look and any Armour collector should be saying 5 Mantle correct !

A look at the pic below and you can see all 5 of the Mantle corrects are yellow. Comparing notes with SFLA Yank we know of fewer than 6 yellow Mantle correct in existance...up till now !

Next take a look at the Jackson nfielder, Trucks 2 words and Kuenn Bats/Throws the other high priced rare variations in the set.

So what is this coin lot that appears to be in pretty good condition worth ? I'll let you determine that !
As for me I say Congratulations Armour Al......................

40 This and that

Thought I would cover a few interesting tidbits in this blog.

 

Nellie Fox Bust Tilts

 

 First of all, long time collector Chisox Tony sends this 1960 Nellie Fox summary of bust tilts. For those of you who don't know what these are, search the early blogs for a complete blog describing them. Basically, my premise is that multiple molds were used for many of the coins. The writing on the front of the coins were not identically aligned  to the bust of the player on the coin and so the bottom left point on the bust points to different letters in the different molds.

 

Tony reports finding 4 different bust tilts for 1960 Fox as shown below.  

From left to right the neck is pointing to the T, the TE, the left of the E and the right of the E. Fascinating that these are being reported all for the same color meaning one mold was NOT just used to manuf 1 color. I checked my Fox collection and found an even distribution of the 4 bust tilt variations across my broad spectrum of color variations.

More mis-graded Mantles

A few blogs ago I ranted on a PSA 10 Mantle with missing back rim. Could there possibly be anything worse ? Well to me the following is even worse. This PSA 8 royal blue Mantle still up for sale on EBay has the back rim broken off and sitting on the encapsulated coin. Was this broken off during or after the encapsulation ?? No way to know.....I'd love to have it in my set as a great example of damaged 1960 rims, but  the seller turned down my offer of $10.........