The rarest..Brown OLD MILL/Factory #649 red overprint

[tedzan]

Jim R

Is the card you are referring to ?





TED Z

[cfc1909]

yes-that has Foster on the front per the Oser auction discription from 1998-the auction picture only shows the back of the card.

[tedzan]

How many of these Brown OLD MILL's with multiple printer's strikes of the "Factory #649" overprints are you aware of ?


TED Z

[cfc1909]

Greminger with single red bar
Foster with double red bar

only two I have ever seen-I think Greminger came from a Lipset & the Foster from an Oser.

[canjond]

Ted - I don't quite follow your connection here when you say specifically "No coincidence, I say....the various Factory's throughout ATC system would place orders with American Litho. (ALC) for 1000's of T206's. ALC would then fill these orders on a large batch process, printing up all cards destined for that factory....in this case HINDU and SWEET CAPORAL."

. Let me break down why:

- I follow your connection between Hindu and the borwn Old Mills, specifically that you postulate that the printer's may have not re-inked the machine after a brown Hindu run when printing the Old Mill backs, hence why we have brown Old Mill backs.

- I lose you here, however... If the connection between the Sweet Caporal's being overprinted for Factory 649 and the Old Mill's having the 649 red bar on them was to come full circle, wouldn't Old Mill's have to be from Factory 649, not the Hindu's? In other words, if Old Mill is connected to both Hindu (through the brown ink) and Sweet Caporal 649 (through the red overprint), and Hindu and SC are connected in that both were 649's, I don't see where Old Mill fits into this scenario (as this is Factory 25, Va)... It seems like an odd "brand" out.

Assuming your Old Mill brown theory is correct, the printer would have had to ink the machine to print factory 649 Hindu's. Then, they ran a batch of Factory 25 OM's, but forgot to re-ink the machine black. They then changed back to SC's to run 649 SC's? The connection is lost. The printer started with 640 Hindu's, changed to Factory 25 OM's, then went to 649 SC's. All of the cards for a single factory, ie factory 649, were not produced in a single order. A factory 25 order was completed inbetween.

[tedzan]

A very fair question....and perhaps, I may have been somewhat unclear by mixing in too many factors in my story.
First......In is my understanding that uncut sheets of 12, 24, 36 or 48 T206 fronts were printed first.

2nd....By the Summer of 1909, American Litho. (ALC) had already printed "tons" of SWEET CAP 150 (Factory 30) cards.
In the Summer/Fall of 1909, J. B. Duke (ATC) decided to increase cigarette production at the more efficient and lower
cost Rochester plant (Factory #649) with the SWEET CAP brand. Remember, Factory #649 was already producing the
HINDU brand.

In order to accommodate this change, ALC selected from their existing stock of SWEET CAP cards and modified them in
order to be shipped to Rochester by overprinting their backs with the red bar and "Factory #649 1st Dist. N.Y." lettering.

3rd....in the process of cranking out Brown HINDU backs, let's assume the printer then continued to print the OLD MILL run
of Southern Leaguer's with the same Brown ink. Furthermore, we know that there are very few examples of the Brown OLD
MILL's that have been found, then we can further assume that this was a limited occurrence. And, that most of these were
used as printer's scrap (as is evident with the red overprints).

4th....Coincidences:

(a) The 34 subjects of the 150 series of So. Lgrs. were printed with both HINDU and OLD MILL backs.

(b) The "Factory #649 1st Dist. N.Y." printer's "test stamps" on the brown OLD MILL scraps are indicative of press runs
of HINDU cards and SWEET CAP (modified) cards occurring simultaneously.

Jon, actually I would guess that the red bar and the Factory #649 lettering were hand stamped on the backs of the
Sweet Cap 150/30 cards.

Finally, be not mistaken, the So. Lgrs. with the Brown OLD MILL's backs (with, or without the Red overprints) were
shipped to Richmond, Virginia (Factory #25). So, there's no confusion here.

If I haven't answered your question, please email me directly (please, no PM's) and we can discuss this some more.

tedzan@comcast.net

Best regards,

TED Z

[tedzan]

Hey guys, any more of these out there ?


Thanks,

TED Z