T227 Purple
 

Going through my box of recently acquired slabs to crack, I noticed an odd one a few weeks ago, a Baker with what looks like a purple back. Since I have a Baker, I'm posting it here but this really fits in several of the forums. I've shared this elsewhere and with a couple of my card pals 1:1, but haven't found much for or against the possibilities, as I see them at present, thus far.


ALC printed a lot of sets with a lot of different color backs. Most T59 collectors have been driven to the point of madness trying to decipher them all and eyeballing cards. T227 isn't known as one of them though, it's master set is a pretty simple checklist. All 24 cards with Honest Long Cut, 22 of them with Miners Extra with the 2 evidently-pulled cards not known with a Miners back at this time, as far as I am aware.


I'm not saying there is a third back, but in going through mine I've noticed a distinctly purple color to some of the back inks, perhaps a slightly lighter shade than the T59 purple. Black fades to Brown in my experience with ALC/ATC sets, not purple. I have ~7,000 ATC/ALC partnership cards, but I've never seen a black faded to purple, or a chemically altered one that achieves this. Doing another search through of my t card boxes and looking at every black or purple looking back, I can find no further examples that might confirm a fading thesis. The lack of this effect in other ALC issues of the era in a broad sample makes me lean towards that either a different ink (I am no expert in this subject whatsoever) was used here, or there may be something to this.


I have a small T227 collection, just 15 Honest Long Cut's. Of those 15, 3 are this purpley color. Those 3 cards come from 2 different origin sources. IF (that's a big if, at the moment) they left the factory like this, I thus doubt they are particularly rare. The "Purple" cards are Home Run Baker (still not cracked out of it's SGC holder, though I certainly don't trust them to ID even simple alterations), Hoppe, and Uhlan. None have any ink or color differences on the front of the card. They certainly aren't altered in the sense of someone intentionally messing with them and trying to pass them off as some variant.


Black, dark blue, dark green, brown, dark purple (though this is more of a light purple) they can all look vaguely similar depending on toning and how a card has aged, how much black it got on the press, etc. One thing I do when I have one I'm not instantly sure on (like a T30 Hassan being black or dark green, for example) is change the lighting conditions, a high lumen light usually makes it obvious when it's just a less-dark printing/fading/toning of the same root color. In this case, it sure looks obviously and distinctly different.


Attached photo's show the cards. First is the graded Baker on top of another encased card (Marquard) in standard black, under normal lightbulb light. Second photo shows the "purple" Hoppe next to a black Johnson, with a T59 Purple under direct sunlight, raw. Finally, I have attempted to photograph them under a high lumen light with a penny sleeve. The condensing of photo's required for an image to attach on Net54 may limit the clarity, but I hope what I am talking about comes through clearly.


It's clear in hand even to my poor eyes that under the light the color is vastly different, but a lot can happen in a century, and a lot can happen that I haven't seen before. I'm generally agnostic on what I'm looking at, except that I strongly doubt altered-with-intent-to-decieve. Does anyone else have Purple T227's? Anyone have any of the ALC T cards where black has become Purple, through fading, or chemical exposure that has not affected other parts of the card?

I'd recommend viewing and comparing the two different ink colors under an USB Microscope if possible. I use the brand Plugable. I know your cards side by side, one does look more purple than black but many faded T206 Old Mill Southern League cards look brown until you either look at the ink close-up or compare it to an actual brown Old Mill. Here's a few pictures of a T206 Blue Ink Old Mill and a T206 Black Ink Old Mill under a microscope, along with a few different shades of Blue to find an exact match as to where the Blue Ink came from. I'm also a big T59 Flags collector, so I understand the different shades one color can have. But I've also noticed that many of those shades match each other when the card backs are broken up into different Factory and Subject numbers. But I still run across a few cards out of thousands that I don't know what color to classify it as. The only way to determine if you have a true color error is to find out where that color came from. After comparing the Blue Old Mill with other cards with Blue Inks, I found an exact match to T206 Piedmont Blue from the same time period of 1909.

Got my hands on a microscope, and under 150x and 450x magnification, I first examined two T59's (as the Recruit Factory 606 Purple's in that set are well-known and long-recognized as distinctly different from the black Recruit Factory 25's) and then two T227's. My conclusion here, using the T227 Attell black and Hoppe purple is that they are clearly a distinct, different color of ink. It's very close to the T59 Purple, possibly the same.

The Attell and Hoppe were used because they came from the same source, and have an identical crease that suggests they were stored on top of each other for some time at least.

Still looking for evidence that ALC/ATC partnership cards can possibly fade from black to purple. I have found nothing in any set thus far that suggests they can or do. 2 other T227 collectors I've shown mine too have found purple's in their stacks, but that doesn't solidify whether it left the factory this way.

These cards are commonly discussed here, surely some others here have stacks of T227's to take a look at? Purple's do not seem to be all that rare, whatever they are. Mine are not unique.

I'm pretty sure no one here is that interested in discussing color theory, but anyhow, here are some ideas to think about.

I think it is very possible that there is a variation that you describe coming from the printing of these cards. True black is something that we haven't achieved yet, to my knowledge, here on Earth. Check out this link that discusses carbon nanotubes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube

These color differences that we perceive on the backs of some of these cards, in my opinion, really are nothing more than variations of black in some cases. Yes, there is a clear difference visible, so for the sake of discussing cards they are different. Certainly information can be gathered about print runs and the different ink batches used. In my opinion, some of these variations of black are the same as the variations seen with Sovereign green and Piedmont blue cards. It's unsurprising that there are different formulations of black, just like with green and blue, or other colors. I know some will not agree that different variations of black exist. I'm just not convinced that every time we see something that doesn't look like a nice dark black it means that it was ink intended for something else. It's possible in some cases, sure, but it's also known that not all black looks the same.

Check out some of these different types of black, many appear blue, brown, purple, etc.:
https://simplicable.com/new/black-color

Again, yes they appear different to the eye and indeed are, so conclusions can be drawn about them in the card world. At the end of the day, I think this is why it is challenging to say if an Old Mill is "brown" or "black" when examining them on a computer screen. Differences in hand? Sure. Could the wrong ink have been used? Possibly. Could the ink have been mixed a little differently like with the Sovereign greens and Piedmont blues? Yep.

There are numerous ways to produce "black" ink. Was there clear intent to make Sovereigns different greens? Clear intent to make Piedmonts different blues?

I know color theory is not that interesting to most, but I'm not talking about different shades of Piedmont blue, but two completely different colors. Like Old Mill Blue, though I guess most of us only care for T206.

There may not have been intent to make different Piedmont blue's or sovereign greens, but there was surely intent to make them blue and green. Black and light purple are pretty far apart on the color spectrum, that's the difference I'm talking about, two very distinctly different colors in the box of crayons, and if it left the factory that way, not varying shades of the same color that every set and large print run will produce.

It is certainly an intriguing find and it will be interesting to see what else surfaces with these. I think of the T210 series 3 as well. Some of those fronts are very clearly orange and some very clearly red, with shades in between. It is my opinion that the intent was to make them all red, but a mistake happened and they let them through.

On the other side, you have the T206 OMSL browns that were hand cut and clearly scraps or mistakes that were caught. However, many of the T206 OMSL appear brownish when compared to the standard OMs in T206. The ones that get designated as brown are different though. The explanation of how you go from a brown to a brownish black is probably pretty simple.

Again, it's interesting and if the sample size grows it should tell us more. There is probably a simple answer on how you go from purplish to black. I would think it is possible that it was some sort of corrected mistake. They look neat, I can confirm that. :)

I think they are probably a different color ink. I don't think they would have been to concerned how exact the ink colors were.

I don't think the ink would fade from black to purple and I'm not so sure the black fades to brown either.

After 2 years, I am much more comfortable stating that it is indeed a different back. I would estimate something like 20-33% of Honest Long Cut's are of this variety, but a 2 year sample from one collector is not particularly huge or conclusive. It is not a difference big enough to be particularly interesting to most collectors like Hindu Brown vs. Hindu Red, but it seems to be a genuinely different and third back. If it was fading or environmental conditions, it would be very unlikely to be a shading exclusive to T227 and it is difficult to see how black would fade or age into a purpley-grey hue anyways.

I am looking for more back images of Rodgers and Brown in particular. The Brown in the non-sport gallery is the purpley back.

Interesting observation Greg! I have a couple of handfuls of T227 so I will check mine out to see what I come up with.

Will it be on the Honest Long Cuts only? Or will the purple be on the Miners Extra? I have both backs

Only on the Honest Long Cut's. Miner's Extra, and any other black ink back from the ATC sets, doesn't come in this purpley hue. Thankfully, doing this set in master form is going to crush my wallet with 3 backs, 4 would be even worse!