Posted By:
JerryI own a Revelle with a brown old mill back.
I believe that there may have been 3 sheets of Brown Old Mills printed. The reason for this being I have also seen scans of a Brown Old Mill with the single red overprint bar and have also seen a picture of a double overprint with red bars in a book entitled "Most Valuable Baseball Cards" by Christopher Benjamin. The picture in this book is not extremely large, but the print definitely looks brown rather than black.
I would assume that the printer wouldn't mix different overprint bars on a single sheet. Thus, 3 possible sheets were produced.
As you can see there is a strong tie between the old mill brown back and the even more rare red overprint backs because the printer must have printed these at approximately the same time. The overprint could have been added at a later date, but realistically speaking it doesn't make sense that the printer would have printed the brown backs and just sat on them until the overprint was added at a much later point in time.
I also believe that the brown backs were produced before the introduction of the Texas League players because I have never been able to confirm one of these players with a brown back.
PS - I once owned the Thornton mentioned by Art. I can tell you it was brown and not faded black.
Jerry