T227 Purple

[G1911]

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?