t206 Color Added????
 

Hi Everyone:

Just received a low grade T206 Fred Beck card I won in an ebay auction for $26. The card would, at best, get a grade of FAIR with rounded corners, creases, and even a reference to the position he played "1B" written in pencil in the lower right after the "Boston Nat'l".

Here's the question. Upon inspection, I noticed that the glove, the dark grass to the right of his hand and the trees in the background have a sort of "shine" to them. I held the card to a black light, but it didn't look out of the ordinary and upon magnification, the card did not appear to be "filled in" as the dot style of printing was evident throughout the entire card, even the "questionable" areas. Could this somewhat meaningless card have color added or be altered? I mean, what would be the point? It is at best a $30 to $40 card...unless it was practice for a would be Doc????

Now for this card, I don't care...at the price point and the fact that almost my entire set is made up of cards that are either poor to good. I wondering what to look for for some of the bigger cards that I still need that might be purchased raw.

Any thoughts would be appreciated....Thank you all in advance!

Kindest regards,

JT

I'm pretty sure color added will show itself definitively under uv light (although I'd like to hear if there's any type of coloring that wouldn't), so it's probably not that.

I won't list them on here but there is a ton of ink that doesn't "Glow" under a UV light. I also really like a halogen light. The halogen works best with black ink as it makes most added ink look grey.

That's interesting to know. I wondered if, even if it didn't glow, would it really blend in well enough with surrounding color under UV or would there always be a reasonably significant contrast of some sort? Like I was curious about that restored Wagner that's going up for auction soon and I figured that would look like an absolute monstrosity under UV, even if professionally done. But maybe not.

Another possibility is that a kid with some colored pencils had access to this card and had some fun with it, possibly at some early point along its 100+ year life.

Your card is fine. On most T206 cards the darker colors will have a bit of shine to them especially if that color has black highlights. The black ink usually shines the most. Other possible causes for shiny spots would be glue residue from either being glued into a scrapbook with too much glue or removed from a scrapbook and not being rinsed off fully.