T206 Tris Speaker "Missing Red Ink"

[Tripp Trapp]

I'm curious if anybody has any thoughts are on this Speaker. The research I've done seems to suggest that it may not be an actual "missing red ink" variant but a printing anomaly. This Speaker seemingly is missing the red ink identifying Boston on the uniform, while the red ink on Speaker's cap is clearly there. Could there have been two separate red color passes and/or printing plates for this particular card? Seems odd but plausible I guess.

[Sean]

Hi Eric, I saw your post in the T206 missing color thread, but I didn't post because I'm not sure about this card. I'm leaning toward it being faded rather than never having the red applied at all. I doubt that there were two red passes, but Steve B. or Ron K. could speak to that more coherently than I could.

Could you please post a scan of the back of the card?

[CW]

I can still see a faint trace of the BOSTON, so it appear sot be faded to me rather than completely missing that ink.

[Ronnie73]

There's only a single red ink pass. If there was a chance of a pink ink pass under the red ink pass, we would of seen ink registration errors showing two different ink passes on other cards which we don't. It's either faded, under inked, or chemical related fade. Still a neat card and falls into a list of many red ink variations. I'm personally not a fan of faded, lightly inked, or different color shaded cards. To me, the color is either there or it isn't. Anyways, it's still a Tris Speaker and you can't go wrong with Tris.

[steve B]

There are two of these on ebay right now, which gives a good opportunity to have a fairly close look.

Both have the bright red on the hat, but not on the uniform. I've seen a few of these and they're usually like that.
And there isn't an indication on any others that there is pink under the red on the uniform. But it is under the red on the hat.
That's a bit unususal, as there's usually pink under the bright red.

What I think it might be, and I'd have to see a bunch more Speakers to be sure, is that at one point they ran the pink as bright red and bright red as pink.
So not a missing color, but a switched color.

Now the "proof" would be a group of maybe 10-12 cards with a similar thing going on. But it could be a lot more subtle.

Steve B

[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by steve B

There are two of these on ebay right now, which gives a good opportunity to have a fairly close look.

Both have the bright red on the hat, but not on the uniform. I've seen a few of these and they're usually like that.
And there isn't an indication on any others that there is pink under the red on the uniform. But it is under the red on the hat.
That's a bit unususal, as there's usually pink under the bright red.

What I think it might be, and I'd have to see a bunch more Speakers to be sure, is that at one point they ran the pink as bright red and bright red as pink.
So not a missing color, but a switched color.

Now the "proof" would be a group of maybe 10-12 cards with a similar thing going on. But it could be a lot more subtle.

Steve B

I never really thought about a possible ink color swap. I guess the next step would be to search other cards from the same print group/sheet to see if a pattern exists.