1911 OBAK - Maroon back
 

Is the card on the right tough to find? I have all 175 and 174 are red-backed.

Maybe not as maroon as yours, but not Obak-Red either...


Attachment 96525

Yep, looks similar.

Neat card. Would you say a variation color? Definitely looks like it could be

Have seen a few over the years, undoubtedly of the gazillion printed getting the exact same shade of ink was not an exact science.

Thanks. Yes, but this isn't a 'shade of color' issue. All other 174 are red - maybe some or lighter or darker than others, but none are any shade of maroon. It's also very apparent that the collection I have was built from a number of different sources.

The color shade is just a question of saturation or how much ink was applied not a different color like black/brown Lenox etc. IMO

Here’s one that has both dark red and light red….


http://photos.imageevent.com/piojohn...huge/Mitze.jpg

John, my red ones are not the same color as the light part of your card. Yours appears to be maroon and light maroon, not maroon and red.

It could be a matter of paper type, acidity or basic levels. Pine pulp vs poplar pulp? Maybe just a bad run of ink, or dirty printheads. Maybe they retired an old printing device and commisioned a new one?

Any number of possibilites.

Could be, but the print quality is as good or better than my other 1912 OBAKs.

I'll bring it to the National and show it to Scott and John if he's there. I'm sure that at least some of the ones they have seen are exactly like mine and if I buy beers I might be able to entice close scrutinization.

Can you ship me a beer? :D

I think Johns card shows us the answer.

There are a few different ways to make red ink, the common one is with Cochineal, and another common one includes iron oxide.

Neither one is exactly red, although cochineal red is quite close.
There's a good picture towards the bottom of this page of the raw pigment.
http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/...e/carmine.html

The ink suppliers typically supply a few basic colors and the press operator mixes the ink as needed according to a recepie. The brighter red would probably be a basic red lightened with some white and maybe a touch of yellow. Add black and maybe a bit of blue and you get a darker shade closer to maroon.

Another thing that happens to some inks is that one of the components can oxidize which changes the color. It's very common on orange stamps from the 1920's which can turn brownish.

Red is also prone to changes from light.

Where Johns card shows a mix of a darker shade and a lighter one, I'd think that the ink on a few has oxidized and darkened.
It's also possible the darker ones were simply mixed wrong.

Steve B

my .02 color wheel
 

Alot of "black inks" are actually "Mars" or very dark blue. If some red mixed with the dark blue it would be maroon or purple. I don't collect the obaks but have seen some offered with the maroon back. If you have 174 red and 1 maroon, then i'd call it a rare back.

Thanks for your responses. I've been looking closely at the red backs and many of them have light red ink, while others have heavy red ink - but it's still all red, as opposed to maroon. Doesn't matter in terms of value - these oddball cards all go in the permanent collection, not the BST area :)