E94 and E98 Color Variations

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Posted By: Bob

Guys, I also saw the Speaker being listed as "gold" and it absolutely is NOT. I have a gold Speaker and the gold background is exactly like the gold background Pete posted above on his Young. That mystery color is orange. Now before you jump to the conclusion that it is merely a faded red or a missing color in the process, I have to relate a story.
About 4 years ago Brian Daniels asked me about the value of an orange Cobb in the E94 set. I assumed he was mistaken and pointed out he had an E98, not an E94. Brian then insisted it was an E94, I said no way, etc. About 2 years later Brian sent me a scan of several beautiful E94s, violets, golds, blues and .....oranges! All PSA 6s or better. The orange ones included Speaker, Cobb, Jennings and several others. I was shocked but there they were. I ended up buying a PSA 6 Devore orange. The orange background on the Devore exactly matches the orange background on the other orange cards. The last collector to utter disbelief was my buddy Pete C., he of the scan above. Pete asked me to bring it to the National, which I did. He checked the card out and I finally got him to admit that he just wasn't sure, not a positive response but not a negative one either. Everyone else I have showed the card to has told me that yes it is orange, yes it is real, and yes, they have no clue as to its origins at the printer.
Bottom line, ruling out that any collector would be idiotic enough to take a gorgeous E94 and alter the color to a color which supposedly doesn't exist, and judging by the fact that there are only, literally a handful of these around, you have to think that maybe the original plan was to go with orange as one of the six colors but the orange just didn't look good enough or perhaps there were supposed to be 7 colors but the orange was eliminated for economic or perhaps numerical reasons. I don't know. I do know orange E94s exist.