02 Armour Coins 1959

          The 1959 Armour set is the easiest to discuss and collect because it 's        variation free. First lets look at the composition of this 20 coin set.

         As can be seen in the table below, the set comes in two groups which, in some instances,  we will see determine what colors are available.

         As of June 2012 there are (1261) 1959 aromour coins graded by

              PSA     there are no rare player coins in 1959. The Aaron coin, is the most in demand, especially in rare colors.

Lets call group 1 (the white lines) the Aaron group and group 2 (the grey lines) the Antonelli group.

Several of the rare colors appear only in one group or the other which we shall explain below.  

Both the Aaron group and the Antonelli group ae available in the 4 very common colors (red, orange, navy blue and green) Royal blue and yellow appear to be somwhat rarer, in fact I have the complete set in yellow, but am missing 5 of the royal blue coins. I think we can be sure that all of these exist making for 120 color variations .

It should also be noted that Armour,  in return for proof of purchases,  sent 10 random player coins to kids but only in the 4 very common colors of red, orange, green and navy blue.

Now lets look at some examples of these coins.  

Next lets look at the colors that are very clearly tied to either the Aaron or Antonelli group. So called light blue and grey/green have only showed up as group 1 coins and two shades of pink, a light pink and a dark pink (UPDATE 1/18/2013 - SEE BLOG 10 !))  have only showed up as type 2 coins. These are significantly rarer than the six colors discussed above. From my experience, grey/green is rarer than light blue and dark pink is rarer than pale pink. This accounts for another 40 coins that we are sure exist. That takes us up to 160 coins.

  

Below are examples of these colors.

Next a very special 1959 "color" - "speckled". These are coins that so far have shown up in transparent blue and aqua colors and appear to have bits of colored confetti incorporated into them. These have all but disappeared from EBay over the last 5 years . There is no documentation that states whether these were made in both group 1 and 2, but the only ones I have ever seen are all from group 1. I personally have Ashburn, Fox, Malzone, Siever and Skinner. Never seen an Aaron. Do they exist for group 2 - none of the collectors that I know think so ! So there are probably a total of 20 speckled coins (10 in blue and 10 in aqua). Needless to say these can now be listed as super rare.
                                              (UPDATE 1/13/2013 - SEE BLOG 11 !)
 

Lastly there are colors that are certainly confirmed but exist in such small mnumbers that we cannot be sure if they are limited to group 1 or group 2 or only subsets of theose groups. These colors consist of dark red, pale red, very pale red, burnt orange, dark greyblue, opaque green, dark green, cream and s more standard yellow. For these cases I'll just show you the ones I know exist altough there are probably many more.

Below are pics of some of these very rare coins.  

Hope this helps you understand the 1959 set...as I said its all in the colors.

There are other issues like "transparancy" and "bust tilts" color "swirls" which we will discuss seperately later.

If you have coins that are examples of colors not mentioned here or have rare colors that you'd like to sell, please get in contact with me at philgarrou@att.net

01 Why a blog on armour coins ?

I guess we should start off with an introduction. My name is Phil Garrou. In the world of Armour coins I'm known as ArmourPhil. I grew up in Hells Kitchen in NYC in the 1950's and 60's  and one night a week my family had "beans and franks". During the summers of 1955, 1959 and 1960 Armour franks offered a premium for kids in their packages of franks which were different colored plastic coins baseball players.

I kept these coins tucked away in a cigar box and later in life , in the late 1970's, when my interest in BB cards and other memorabelia had been rekindled by co-worker Larry Duquette, I found that these coins were catalogued and were actually available at BB card shows in the area (Framingham MA). That really began my quest for the perfect collection.

With the inception of the internet and EBay I found that others had these coins and were willing to sell them , which has built up my sets at a much more rapid pace.

In the last decade, working with other collectors we have identified significant variations, especially in the 1955 set which had never been catalogued before.

The purpose of this blog will be to docuent all that we have found. Until recently we have kept Bob Lemke in the loop and he has been diligent getting any new variations into the Std Catalog of BB Cards (which he edited until his recent retirement) . He now informs me that the current editors have no interest in adding to, or correcting, past entries (no money in this) so I feel an obligation to get all the info that I have documented herein.

Armour coins are currntly graded by PSA and you can find a list of the graded collections here:

1955 [link]                         1959 [link]                       1960 [link]

An article that I wrote for PSA back in 2006 can be found here [link].

In each blog I will attempt to tackle a specific year or topic and share what I have learned with you. The biggest probem I forsee is that color is a key attribute to armour coins and the software in our computers may not allow you to see what the eye can very easily pick up in terms of color differences, but we will try the best we can.

For this blog I will finish with a picture of the coin that started it all, the 1955 Mantle in orange. You can see that Mantle is spelled "Mantel" on the front of the coin. This error was later corrected. This miss spelling is the common coin.

(click on picture for larger version)