N266 Red Cross - confirming the master set

[G1911]

Usually I try to confirm things myself before asking others to go to effort, but this one is difficult to do from pictures online because the difference is pretty obvious in hand but doesn't show up well in pictures. Thought I would start here this time.

Basically, N266 comes in at least four different types, which I have numbered on an arbitrary basis. The 2 from normal production are those from the pickup thread; and the 2 kinds of "proofs" (more likely just poster cuts or similar) were shared a couple years ago in another thread after Adam posted 1 and I showed the other. Here's all four known types:


Type 1 - Normal card, the copyright line on front is very faint and in an italicized font where the "1893" can look a lot like "1890".

Type 2 - Normal card, the copyright line on front is faint but less fain than type 1, and is in a much thicker, bold font where the "1893" cannot be mistaken for "1890".

Type 3 - Thinner card that appears cut from something, with a gold border around the white (sometimes trimmed off); the copyright line at the top of the picture rather than the bottom, and no "Red Cross Long Cut" on the front. Tend to appear handcut.

Type 4 - Similar to type 3; a thinner card that appears cut from something with a gold border added. In the bottom gold border there is a blue caption for the card title; which does not appear in red at top like it does in types 1-3. Tend to appear handcut.


Personally, types 3 and 4 are probably advertising material or something and not technically part of a master set of actual production cards, but that makes them no less cool and interesting. I am not aware of much of any research here and am starting from scratch.


The sample here is possibly biased; 2 of my 25 cards from 1 buy, a 3rd from eBay, and the other 22 from a batch that apparently came from a single previous collection. Thus, that I have 12 of type 1 and 13 of type 2 may not be proof that they are roughly equally common, but it is my starting supposition that there is not a meaningful rarity difference between the two types. The handful of "CONFIRMED" cells in the below come from images online that are HD enough to be 100% certain of the caption type. This isn't very hard to tell apart in hand, so I am hoping some of you might be willing to check your cards and share which ones you have of which type so that we might be able to collectively validate a checklist.

Types 1 and 2 are shown here for better clarity than my words can do.