Brown Old Mill
Leon,
I would classify Brown Old Mills as scrap for several reasons. All confirmed examples are hand cut and they are not the normal color for this type of back. Thus, this back with Brown ink seems to have been a mistake or experiment. If there were actually intentions to distribute the Brown Old Mill I'm sure we would have run into a factory cut example by now and we would have also found them in greater numbers.
In addition, the fact that several of these come with the Factory 649 overprint it suggests that the printer knew they were scrap and ran at least several of these sheets through the printing process adding/testing the factory overprint process.
This also suggests that at least 2 full sheets of these backs may have been destroyed because there is only one known example with a single factory overprint and a second example with two factory overprints.
Jerry
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