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[G1911]

Originally Posted by butcher354435

Greg, I believe the Diamond D stamp is original. When an N386(Boxer or actress) has an advertisement on front(Echo for your copy) I have never seen one without the Diamond D stamp. When they don't have an advertisement on front they always have the Spaulding & Merrick writing on the reverse. I could be wrong but I haven't seen an example fit outside of what I listed above but you are much better than I am at this investigative stuff.

Attached is an example of the pattern with multiple sub issues:

https://flickr.com/photos/201243808@...7720319623563/

https://flickr.com/photos/201243808@...77720319623563

Wow that is a beautiful array, you always make the sets I consider pretty tough look easy!


I thought the stamp was an original production facility mark for a long time, as I still haven't seen a card sans the stamp. I assumed that made it pretty cut and dry and obvious, if it is on every card then that stamp must be from the production process.

What has led me to question this is how some of the stamps are placed. I have seen a few Smoke Echo actresses with the stamp placed over areas of paper loss on the back. Attached is an example of this (not my card, for disclosure). The area is paper loss - we can see the back stock pulling up where the paper loss ends in a few spots, typically evidence paper loss occurred during a forceful removal from a scrapbook or similar - but the stamp is placed over it. The stamp is fairly light on some cards, often a partial diamond as your first Kilrain shows, and I think has faded over time a bit on some, which this card also shows. There are fainter hints of the stamp on the creamy stock too, but most of it is centered in the paper loss, where it is a fairly bright impression.

This seems to leave conflicting evidence. If every card has the stamp, which seems to be the case, that strongly implies it was part of production. On the other hand, this card was stamped after it was glued into a scrapbook or something else and then pulled out of it, which would be post-production at some significant remove.

This set had a prize winning card for the set offer (certainly #20, the prize winner in the animals series, and the only card # here that is unknown to us today), but it doesn't make any sense that every surviving card was from a set turned in as a prize winner and that this stamp is a sort of cancellation mark for turned in cards. It's possible it could be post-production if all the cards of this variety known today came from one secondary source, a person who marked them with a stamp, but there is nothing to support that. I really don't know what to make of it, though I have come to think that it could not possibly be pre-production because if it was, a card with paper loss from being affixed to a scrapbook or similar would logically interrupt the stamp.

There are so many fun little mysteries about these cards for us to figure out still.