Question on T205 Green Borders

[BobC]

Thanks, I found that thread about green border T205s from 6 years ago myself and found it quite enlightening. I was initially worried about the lack of any gold on the border of this Wilhelm "suffered" variation that I just got but, after reading through that old thread I'm not as concerned anymore. In fact, it seems to fit a pattern that all of the green border T205s had in that they all seem to be in poor shape. Plus, it had the light green background on the card itself, which a lot of the green bordered T205s appear to also exhibit.

I also found it very interesting that one of the questions Ted Z originally was asking about in that earlier thread was to see if these green border T205s were perhaps limited to only one specific tobacco brand but, as was shown via responses in that thread, that turned out to not be the case. Well here is a Hassan ad-backed T205 with a definite green border, and no evidence of there ever being any gold flake applied to it at all, to add to the list of possible green bordered T205s.

I also noticed in that earlier thread there was speculation as to what may have caused there to be such T205s lacking the familiar gold flake border. One hypothesis was that the last of these T205s may have been printed later in the run, even into 1912, and that there may have been no gold added due to either a cost issue or possibly just running out of the gold flake paint. I'm not sure as to the history of the Wilhelm "suffered" variation and whether or not there is any proof or speculation that the correctly spelled version was thought to have been printed first, and then something happened to the die whereby the "r" in suffered was gone and no longer printed on the back of the card in line 18 for all the remaining cards, or if the error was what was initially printed on all the Wilhelm cards and it was only at the very end of the print run that someone noticed and corrected the error, and then printed the corrected version for just the Hassan brand before the entire print run was then shut down.

Another alternative theory could be that the gold-less cards were possibly some prototype run, and that after the initial start with the Hassan backs, the die for Wilhelm card somehow lost the "r" in suffered and no one ever noticed or bothered to correct it. This doesn't seem as plausible though since a majority of the green bordered T205s appear to be with Sweet Cap and Piedmont backs. One would think there would be a lot more Hassan backs with just green borders if this theory was the case.

Probably can never be proved or disproved 100% but, if anyone has any other thoughts on how, or even if, a green bordered Wilhelm variation card fits into the story and how seeing a green bordered version of it could possibly help to explain how cards actually came to exist, it would be interesting to hear. Thanks.


http://www.net54baseball.com/attachm...1&d=1461938108