T-206 Blue Old Mill Back to be in Next REA auction

[Ronnie73]

I'm looking forward to the listing and sale of the "Third" Blue Old Mill. I compared the Powell blue ink with other T206 blue inks. Originally I thought it was the same as the Polar Bear blue. But after more comparing against other T206's, it's a 100% match to Piedmont blue. We all know Piedmont's come in a range of different shades of blue but I was able to see an exact match of color comparing Piedmont's that would have been printed during the same time frame as the Print Group One Old Mill's.

I'm not sure exactly how these color error's happened. It could have been a lazy worker that didn't clean up the Piedmont blue ink before adding the Old Mill black ink. So the first and maybe the second sheet came out in blue. One other possibility is the sheet was a printers scrap but in poor lighting, the ink can look black, so maybe it looked fine and went into the production pile waiting to be cut and inserted into packs.

Even after all this time, I still haven't searched all my Print Group One Old Mill's for more Blue Ink backs. I have 45 chances of finding another one from my Print Group One collection. It's crazy that I remember 10 years ago having 5 graded T206's lined up in front of me on my desk and amazed how awesome they looked. It's been a crazy 10 years.