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.

48 1955 Red MAntle Correct found by Armour Al

We can expect Armour coins of rare color to be scarce or missing from the known sets ...well ...because by definition they are scarce. This should be a random occurrence, i.e. different players missing in diff rare colors, and for the most part that is true.

But...why would a player be missing in a common color ? That is the case for the Mantle correct variations where existence appears to be in the trend :
Navy=Aqua>>pale green=black >>>yellow>>>> orange & red. In fact, up until a few weeks ago no  red correct L-R  was known to exist.

Then it popped up on EBay Armour Al grabbed it before any of the rest of us even knew it was up there. It certainly is not in NM, but it certainly is the only one known to exist.

Below you can see it sitting between Mantle incorrects in orange and dk red.

47 Review of 1960 Armour Coin colors



Finishing up our review of  coin colors...it is now time to take a look at 1960 colors. As you know, the 1960 coins are divided into 2 groups...
(1) the Aaron group with :
Aaron - Braves
Aaron Milw Braves
Banks
Crandall
Fox
Malzone Red Sox
Malzone Boston Red Sox
Mantle
Triandos


The Aaron group comes in the common colors of red, red/oj, yellow, dk green, lime green, royal blue and pale blue as well as the other rare colors shown below except dk yellow and mustard yellow.

(2) the Allison group contains the rest of the players. The Allison group (so far) appears in common yellow and common red/oj and the rare dk yellow and mustard (darker)yellow. As we have discussed in previous blogs, 3 ultra rare lime green coins (Colovito, Wynn and Mays) have appeared oer the last decade.

 Also as we have previously discussed at least 50% and possibly as many as >75% of the mantle coins come with partial back rims making them defective.


             ...WATCH OUT FOR PSA GRADED COINS WITH PARTIAL BACK RIMS...


No one appears to have a grey/blue Mantle with a complete back rim and I have only seen (1) royal blue Mantle with complete back rim and I quickly grabbed it.


More so than 1955 or 1959, 1960 has many coins which we call trans (transparent) Below is a shot of some of the ones that I have. red/oj...yellow...medium green...lime green..dk green....navy blue and pale blue. with both direct light and back light. Close ups re to show you that you actually can read the back of the coins.

Daley has always been reported as the rarest coin in the set. Prices which used to be I nthe $750 range have recently come down to the $4-500 range. 10+ years ago Daley coins appeared on the market that did not match ANY of the known colors shown here. In previous blogs I have shown you some of these coins. They were labeled as "test" coins and many sold for > $1000.  I have repeated a photo of some of them below. Many believe they are fakes.



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 ...