E94 Colors

[Archive]

Posted By: JimB

I am wondering if there is any concensus on which E94 colors are the toughest. I know that the yellow and purple are often thought to be tougher. Do you think that it varies by player or is it fair to say certain colors are tougher overall? If so, how much tougher?
JimB

Image supplied to add some color to the post.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bruce MacPherson

After collecting this set for the past few years, I am tempted to say that Red is the most common color followed by all others fairly equally. Though to me, Gold and Green are the colors I find to be the least common.

Player/color combination scarcity is a tougher call. In theory there should be no difference, but I am sure there are some tougher and easier combinations. Of the 6 or 7 Lajoie's I have seen in the last few years-at least 3 have been Gold (nice card by the way). And there was a Cobb thread a while back and no one could produce one of the colors (purple/blue?). Unfortunately, unlike some of the larger T sets, there may not be enough of these cards remaining to form too many concrete conclusions.

However, when I was studiously collecting the e98 set, there did appear to be card/color combinations that were easy and others that were near impossible to find. For instance, I saw more Red Cobbs than all other colors combined.

[Archive]

Posted By: Dave F

Not much to compare to but out of the six E94's I've owned four were red, one green, and this blue one that I now one. I really like the blue...but would have to consider buying a yellow if I saw one....the purples seems I've seen all over the place..maybe just cause everyone likes them?

[Archive]

Posted By: JK

From what Ive read in the past and more recently (I think tbob recently commented on this issue), Ive always beleived golds and purples to be the most difficult. Purples are not actually "all over the place". Its just that Huggins had a nice group in their auction and Ive been posting them quite a bit lately as Ive picked them up. Im trying to build a set.

A few more:

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

I have vacillated back and forth on my thinking about which colors are more scarce. At first I thought it was gold, then I saw some groups and decided it was purple....then saw groups of those and thought it was something else. Of the 11 I own I have more olive and green than the others and some folks will say they are more scarce. Something tells me E94's are fairly evenly distrubuted among the different colors....at least that is what I have personally seen...regards

[Archive]

Posted By: JimB

I agree with Josh that purples seem like they are around because of the recent Huggins and Scott auction. Generally I feel like I see them quite a bit less frequently. My tendancy is to think that Leon is right, that there is not a huge discrepancy in #s, though maybe some difference. My hunch is that some individual players are very tough in some colors. TBob would probably have the best sense of those.
JimB

[Archive]

Posted By: Brian McQueen

When comparing this set to others, I tend to compare it to the e98 set, the e90-3s, and, surprisingly, the t204 Ramly set the most often.

The reason I say it's a lot like the Ramly set is that both of these sets are sort of "different" in that neither really has any players that are truly "difficult" or scarce. Most of the other sets I've studied have some sort of player distribution qualities that make a couple of them really scarce. I spend a good deal of time researching the tough players in specific sets but with e94s and Ramlys, all the players seem to be about even in terms of difficulty. There will be players that just don't seem to come up as often as others though, perhaps Cy Young??

So I believe that there's really no scarce players in the e94 set, rather more difficult colors instead. This is pretty much the opposite on how I feel about the e98s. I feel that with e98, all four colors are pretty evenly distributed but it's certain players that tend to come around very seldom. On the e94s, I always thought that the dark green and blue were the easiest colors, red and gold were in the middle and violet and olive were the most difficult to find. I agree with a previous post though - there do seem to be a lot of violets that have surfaced lately.

So, if you're going with the base colors - my opinion is that olive and violet are your toughest colors. However, if you're counting anomolies, this is where it gets interesting. This is where the e94 set begins to remind me of the e90-3 set - one of my all-time favorites. Both are sets are known for their obscure background color variations. If you're counting these, which I doubt you are, then I'd go with Grey as the most difficult color on an e94 followed closely by orange. More than likely you're just looking for the base colors so violet and olive would be my picks.

Hope this helps...

Brian

[Archive]

Posted By: robert a

My opinion is that yellow and purple are a bit tougher than the other colors.

Of course orange is the toughest, but it seems to be in a different class than the others which suggests some kind of anomaly with how those cards were distributed compared to the other colors.

If we conducted a comprehensive study of all our E94s it's hard to say if we would see a clear scarcity difference in colors or if they would start to even out as the number of cards in the study went up.

One thing I've noticed which is different than E98 is that certain players in E94 seem to found more often with different color backgrounds.

With E98 I think that colors are equal and that only certain players can be tougher to find. With E94 the colors are more important to me as a collector, although I do believe that Lobert and Cy Young are harder to find than the others.

Unbelievable card by the way Jim! That's just amazing.

Rob

[Archive]

Posted By: Bob

I still believe gold is the toughest color IN ANY CONDITION but my opinion, based on buying and looking at tons of these cards is that the hardest color to find IN HIGH GRADE is easily the olive green.
I agree with Josh 100% that the rash of violets posted on the boards skews the image of violets being not that tough. They are, I just think the golds are the hadest to find.
Brian, I agree that certain player/color combos are incredibly tough for some reason. I have no clue why. I have to disagree with you though on there not being any players that are tougher to find. Bates is a killer, I know 2 different collectors who have complete sets minus Bates. I know there have been a couple of Loberts surface in auction house lots but Lobert, Magee, Kleinow and Byrne are tougher than, for instance, Leach, Doolan, Grant, Lake and Davis.
Finally, the grey Doolan you own, while a terrific card and one I would love to own, can't be considered one of the E94 colors but rather a one of a kind color variation which resulted from the absence of a color in the printing process. Dont get me wrong, I love that card but it is similar to the T206s which are yellow and black because colors didn't get added in. Another has never been seen in that color. The oranges, on the other hand, have been discovered for almost all (if not all) the players in the set. It might be argued that these were red E94s that got an "oops" at the printer who mixed the colors thinking they were E98 oranges, but SGC, PSA and GAI have all graded the oranges and slabbed them. Also, they appeared from different locations in the U.S. and different time frames, 2 from lionel carters collection and most of the rest from brain daniels' e94 stash on the west coast. The thing is that every one of the orange e94s is exactly the same color orange! Not pumpkin orange on one, light tangerine orange on the next, etc. They are all exactly the same shade.

[Archive]

Posted By: Brian McQueen

Bob - I'll go along with your comments about the Bates as you've certainly got more experience with this set than I. I did say that there a few cards that show up less often than others so I agree with your assessment. I was pointing out that there's not really a true set scarcity in the e94 set - something along the lines of a e90-3 Payne, e102 Wagner fielding or e103 Tenney. I've seen a couple Bates for sale in the past few months but not enough to make me think that they're commonly found at all.

Concerning the Grey Doolan, is this really a one-time slip up that only occurred on this very card? I was thinking that it fell into the same category as the orange backed e94s or the blue backed e90-3s. Where there was maybe an entire sheet that missed a color pass in the original print run. I figured there's more grey-backs out there that just haven't turned up yet. I've seen several e90-3 blues and I think we had found 12-15 e94 oranges but not enough to constitute entire sets of either. But it makes sense to hypothesize that they all came from the same sheet originally - even if they turned up in different collections later on. I figured the grey e94s sort of fell into that category as well. e94s were originally printed in sheets though and would have received their color passes through printing before being cut correct? So I figure that it's not probable that the grey variation could have existed originally on only one card. Would it not have been a part of a sheet at one time of cards that missed the same color layer?

But I did say that the grey color is an "anomaly" and does not count as one of the base colors in the set. Like I was saying, I feel the violets or perhaps the olives would count as the most difficult ACTUAL colors to try to find. Just my opinion though and others will certainly have different ideas/experiences.

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

Brian- I believe in any situation where a grey card shows up that is missing colors, the entire sheet would have had to have been grey. I'm not sure there is any other way this could occur.

[Archive]

Posted By: robert a

I've wondered why Lew Lipset's book calls E94 "Gray Backs."

Anyone know?

[Archive]

Posted By: Brian McQueen

Barry -

Yep, that's pretty much what I'm thinking too.

Has anyone ever seen a second e94 greyback?

[Archive]

Posted By: JimB

I would guess that the orange E94s are the result of some sort of messed up red mix print run that probably resulted in several sets worth making it to the streets. Since they would have all come from the same print run/ print mixture, they all would have the same shade and tone. The orange T206 Cobb probably occurred a number of times on different print-runs,accounting for the variation in tone.

Don't get me wrong, I think the orange E94s are very cool, I would love to own one (or more ), but I do not think they were an originally intended color of the manufacturer. Just my opinion. In that sense, I would not see them as a necessary component of an E94 master set.
JimB

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

Jim- I tend to agree with you. There are numerous sets where red cards can be found with orange backgrounds.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bob

Jim- I agree, too, that had an orange color been contemplated in the E94 set surely there would be a 2nd orange Speaker or a second orange Devore, etc. found. I believe all cards in the E94 set have been accounted for with an orange background except McGraw, Kleinow and Magee. The odds would be astronomical that all these cards came from one sheet so they must have come from one print run (?)
Playing devil's advocate, though, if you examine the color of the background on the oranges it doesn't look anything like the orange background on the E98s or E97s or even the T206s. If is a very distinct orange color which leads to the conclusion that perhaps an orange was originally planned but the color wasn't attractive enough and the print run destroyed. Perhaps the olive green was susbtituted for the orange as all the other colors are pretty "chippy" like the bright red, green, blue, violet, forest green and yellow (gold)colors. guess we'll never know.
And yes, there must have been an entire sheet of gray backgrounds printed which left off one of the colors and the sheet then scrapped and Brian's card was the sole survivor from the bin.
tbob

[Archive]

Posted By: Frank Wakefield

Robert A...

I think Mr. Lipset mentions graybacks because the player listing on the back is in a gray ink. That is in the paragraph about E94's that is on page #13 of volume 2 of his Encyclopedia.

E93, E94, E97, and E98 are all quite similar.
E93 has Standard Caramel at the bottom.
E97 has EC Briggs at the bottom.

E94 could have been "anonymous", or could be described by the gray ink on the back.
E98 could also have been "anonymous", or could be described with the "30 players" designation.

Realistically, there are enough anonymous caramel cards, and any distinctive factor would aid in differentiation.

Bert Sugar described E94s as Star Baseball Players, circa 1910. Bert suggested the cards were distributed by George Close Company and Blomes Chocolates.

Mr. Burdick merely listed E94 as "Star Baseball Players"...


So graybacks for the gray ink.

[Archive]

Posted By: BcD

depend in the player given the low survival or population of these.

BcD

[Archive]

Posted By: robert a

Thanks Frank.

The ink looks blue to me, but grey's close enough.

Take care.

Rob

[Archive]

Posted By: JK

This may be a stupid question (Im entitled every now and then), but Im curious, everyone is assuming that if there is one gray card, there must have been a whole set. Same with the orange cards. Has an uncut sheet of e94s ever been found? In other words, even though it logically makes sense that there would be 5 rows of 6 cards or 6 rows of 5 cards - do we know this for sure?

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

I've never heard of a complete or even partial sheet of E94, but all cards were issued in sheets (not a stupid question, a fair one )

[Archive]

Posted By: JK

Thanks Barry - I dont doubt that the cards were issued in sheets. But, what we dont know is whether an entire set was printed on one sheet (which given the small number of cards makes sense) or if it was printed on, for example, two sheets of 15, etc. If the latter is possible, I dont think we can assume that an entire set of each color anomaly exists.

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

15 sounds like a small sheet, 30 is more logical. The printer would have done it in the most economical way possible, and two 15 card sheets would seem to be more expensive to produce.

[Archive]

Posted By: Brian McQueen

Josh,

I think I'd agree with your logic. When I've seen uncut sheets in the past, they've been for either the e93 set or the e97s yet they've always been in sheets of 15 cards - 3 rows, 5 columns. I can't say whether an entire set's worth of grey's or even orange backs existed, however I do know that cards weren't printed individually either so that simply leads me to believe there's more than one e94 with a grey-colored background in existance.

However, my question is simply, why 12-15 oranges and only one grey? Based on the results from TBob's thread a couple months ago, we know of around 12-15 orange e94s in existance. If these came from a sheet of 15, that's most or all of a single sheet right there. It very well may be possible that all the orange e94s came from the same sheet because haven't the bulk of these remained in really nice condition? But since cards are printed and THEN cut, and not the other way around, you would have to think that there are some other grey e94s lurking around in or outside of the hobby somewhere that came from the same sheet mine did.

PS...for those wondering, the grey e94 has a normal back so it's not an advertisement/handcut card or anything like that.

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

Brian- I've seen a complete uncut sheet of E93's and it's 30 cards.

[Archive]

Posted By: JimB

E93s were printed on sheets of 30. The recent sales of smaller "sheets" were partials.
JimB

[Archive]

Posted By: Bob

I wish anyone with an orange background E94 would "check in" and let us know, even if you are just a lurker. I know I have the Devore and Alan S. has the Crawford and Devlin (Carter collection cards). Who else currently owns one? BcD- if it is not asking too much could you let us know where the rest of yours went? I believe Scott Elkins might own one or more. Scott?

[Archive]

Posted By: robert a

Josh and Brian,

Good points.

I would assume if a sheet of orange survived, it would be usable as the color is still very appealing to the public and not much different from the bright red color.

The grey on the other hand was probably treated as pure printer's scrap and discarded as useless. Maybe it was cut and the printer took one home and gave it to his kid.

Robert

[dfletch00]

reviving this thread since it was exactly what I was wondering.

What are the least /most common colors ... I thought purple and gold were least and red /Green(?) were most common.. are there 6 or 7 colors or is that up for debate

any insight appreciated .. I've been offline net54 a long time but look forward to getting back

Thanks Darrell

[scooter729]

I just re-read the old thread, and I think all of the info still holds true. There haven’t been any big finds of these in the interim or any other new info which would change it.

Purple and gold are tough, olive green as well, with red and green most common (and blue closer to the red and green levels).

I consider it 6 colors and the orange as a one-off outlier, though that is probably because I don’t own one. If I had the one I would like to acquire, I’m sure I would say a master set should have 7 colors!

[soxinseven]

Gold is tougher in general than the other colors for some reason. Purple is thought to be tough mainly because of the demand for it. The colors do seem to spike sometimes, meaning you may not see a green for quite a while and 2/3 will pop up at once. Some subjects are nearly impossible in certain color combinations, although at this point every color combo has been confirmed in the six main colors. I believe 22/30 different Orange subjects have been confirmed and there are two Orange Cobbs, adding to the mystery of that color. There are 8/10 of us who chart the colors and keep in touch on different color combos, it really is a fantastic set. Some combos just aren’t seen sometimes for years. Recently it was speculated that the purple Wagner didn’t exist because nothing could be found on it. There are actually four known, people just hold them because it’s Wagner or they are doing a purple run (or both). Good luck in collecting this great set.

[gabrinus]

Steven, I had a purple Wagner for years and didn't even realize the rarity of it...sold it to a board member a few years ago...heavily creased...Jerry

[wayne97]

Having collected e94s over many years, I agree with Steve about about gold color cards as a Bit tougher then other colors. The orange color cards have been speculated on origin for years, any other theories out there, would love to here. As stated above, all cards with all colors have been found, obviously not all player combos in Orange. As e94 collectors know and Tbob will attest to, some player combos are nearly imposssible to find. It’s a great set to chase and as e94 collection matures, one starts to chase the m131 Series set, really a sub set of the e94.

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by wayne97

Having collected e94s over many years, I agree with Steve about about gold color cards as a Bit tougher then other colors. The orange color cards have been speculated on origin for years, any other theories out there, would love to here. As stated above, all cards with all colors have been found, obviously not all player combos in Orange. As e94 collectors know and Tbob will attest to, some player combos are nearly imposssible to find. It’s a great set to chase and as e94 collection matures, one starts to chase the m131 Series set, really a sub set of the e94.

If its not too much trouble, can you give a few examples of some of the tougher player/color combos to find?
Thank you,
Phil

[soxinseven]

Originally Posted by gabrinus

Steven, I had a purple Wagner for years and didn't even realize the rarity of it...sold it to a board member a few years ago...heavily creased...Jerry

Hi Jerry. I remember the card, you sold it to a good friend of mine. I have it in my count. We know where three currently are, a fourth that was auctioned many years ago is out there also.

[soxinseven]

Originally Posted by Casey2296

If its not too much trouble, can you give a few examples of some of the tougher player/color combos to find?
Thank you,
Phil

I can probably answer that for you. A lot experienced collectors have spent years charting colors to try and put together player runs etc. I asked the same question years ago and was met with silence. There are a ton of images on the internet and completed sales on vcp, that’s where I started gathering info. Good luck in the quest!

[gabrinus]

Steven, I had a purple Murray that a friend/board member needed to complete his color run as well...after a few years of him looking I realized I had it and sold it to him...outing myself as an idiot I guess...Jerry

[Leon]

Hey Wayne
Nice info. I know you have collected these a longtime. I have always liked the purple....

Originally Posted by wayne97

Having collected e94s over many years, I agree with Steve about about gold color cards as a Bit tougher then other colors. The orange color cards have been speculated on origin for years, any other theories out there, would love to here. As stated above, all cards with all colors have been found, obviously not all player combos in Orange. As e94 collectors know and Tbob will attest to, some player combos are nearly imposssible to find. It’s a great set to chase and as e94 collection matures, one starts to chase the m131 Series set, really a sub set of the e94.

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by soxinseven

I can probably answer that for you. A lot experienced collectors have spent years charting colors to try and put together player runs etc. I asked the same question years ago and was met with silence. There are a ton of images on the internet and completed sales on vcp, that’s where I started gathering info. Good luck in the quest!

Unfortunate you were met with silence, I guess some collectors are just like that. One of the things I'm impressed with about this forums culture, that Leon and many longtime collectors here have fostered, is the generosity and willingness to share information, some of which has been years in the making. Just take a look at the seminal work Ted Zanidakis has done with the T206 reference directory.

It's refreshing to see, whether a member here is new to the hobby, new to collecting pre-war, or collecting a specific set, the sort of welcoming attitude that doesn't exist in a lot of places.

Thanks for the well wishes,

Phil Lewis

[petecld]

As a long time E94 fan I too have noticed certain player/color combinations seem tougher but I don't think I can say one color overall is harder than others except for orange which any E94 collector will realize is obviously rare. Each collector's experience will be different.

I always wondered if they stopped printing Orange to print more with Blue backgrounds to have cards for the M131 promotion.

[gabrinus]

Here is the list of colors I have for my E94 set...I am not interested in selling any...this is merely for comparison...Jerry

Lake-Gold
Bates-Red
Devore-Red
Davis-Red
bescher-Olive
Kleinow-Gold
Dougherty-Green
Jennings-Olive
Turner-Green
Lajoie-Blue
Devlin-Olive
Lord-Red
Evers-Blue
McGraw-Gold
Wagner-Purple(sold)
Cobb-Gold
Murray-Purple(sold)
Speaker-Red
Grant-Blue
Lobert-Green
Moore-Blue
Leach-Purple
Kleinow-Blue(Blomes)
Austin-Green
Cicotte-Purple
Doolan-Green
Byrne-Blue
Speaker-Green(Blomes)
Magie-Olive(Blomes)
Chance-Green
Wagner-Olive(Blomes)
Young-Gold
Crawford-Olive
Murray-Olive

[soxinseven]

Originally Posted by gabrinus

Steven, I had a purple Murray that a friend/board member needed to complete his color run as well...after a few years of him looking I realized I had it and sold it to him...outing myself as an idiot I guess...Jerry

Hi Jerry,
I remember when your Murray became available. It was only the second one known at that time. Another board member had the other. A high grade example later became available on EBay. Before Pete C acquired one for his purple set no one had seen one.
Steve

[ullmandds]

Originally Posted by soxinseven

Hi Jerry,
I remember when your Murray became available. It was only the second one known at that time. Another board member had the other. A high grade example later became available on EBay. Before Pete C acquired one for his purple set no one had seen one.
Steve

purple

[soxinseven]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

purple

And there it is!

[gabrinus]

That's a nice one Pete...had a board member ask me about my Young, Lake, Moore, and Kleinow and the Young is the only one graded at PSA 3 VG...get my scanner working one of these days and scan them...Jerry