There are 37 different poses in the American Beauty 350 no frame checklist. This subset was released in 1910 and consists entirely of poses from the 350-460 series (also referred to as Print Group 3). It’s easy to confuse the two American Beauty 350 backs. There are two important distinctions. First, AB350nf backs tend to sell for more than a AB350w/f back in similar condition. The reason: There are only 37 cards with AB350nf backs and 190 AB350w/f backs. So, in the aggregate, AB350nf is the scarcer back. However, when you are looking for a specific pose with either an AB350nf or an AB350w/f back, you will likely have a harder time finding the AB350w/f. This is because, on average, a specific pose from the AB350w/f checklist is scarcer than a specific pose from the AB350nf checklist. To put it in simpler terms: The average combined PSA & SGC pop report totals for a given AB350nf card are greater than 10. For AB350w/f, the average combined total is less than 10.
19 of the 37 cards in this subset were also printed with American Beauty 460 backs. This can be confusing because sometimes you will see a listing for one of these cards that simply states the back is an American Beauty back, but does not tell you whether it is a 350 or 460 back. These 19 poses exist with both AB350nf and AB460 backs, but are much scarcer and more valuable with the AB460 back:
- Burch fielding
- Conroy with bat
- Crawford with bat
- Jennings two hands showing
- Jordan batting
- Lake St. Louis, no ball
- Leifield batting
- Manning pitching
- McQuillan with bat
- Mullin with bat
- Overall hand at face level
- Pelty vertical
- Pfeister throwing
- Steinfeldt with bat
- Wagner bat on right shoulder
- Wilhelm with bat
- Willetts
- Willis batting
- Wiltse pitching
Of course, this means that 18 of the poses in the AB350nf subset do not exist with AB460 back. For these 18 cards, it is easier to read the SGC and PSA pop reports and get a feel for how many copies have been graded. SGC and PSA have not always differentiated between the two backs. This makes it tough to get a handle on the true populations of AB350nf versus AB460 for the group of 19 above. I went through both the PSA and SGC Pop Reports and attempted to compile the combined Pop Report totals for each of the 37 cards in the AB350nf subset. This proved to be more difficult than I had imagined. For all of the 19 poses listed above, there are generic entries which could be either AB350nf or AB460 backs. We know that they are far more likely to represent a AB350nf back, but we can’t be sure.
The table above shows the results of my research into the SGC and PSA Pop Report Numbers for every card in the American Beauty 350 no frame subset. Because both PSA and SGC have generic American Beauty listings, it is impossible to know with 100% certainty how many of each pose are in each Pop Report. However, it is possible to look at all the numbers and make a reliable guesstimate. The table below shows the work I used to arrive at the estimates above. As you can see, there are 15 poses in the table below that do not have any ambiguous entries. For those 15, we have the exact Pop Report numbers. For the other 22, I have made an educated guess. For the cards in the AB350nf subset that also exist with an AB460 back, we know that the AB350nf will be far more plentiful. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a 4:1 ratio. This is how I arrived at my estimates. If there are 10 generic American Beauty backs in the PSA Pop Report, I have estimated that 2 of them will be AB460 backs, and 8 of them will be AB350nf backs.
This data shows that the individual cards in this subset are not particularly rare. Steinfeldt has the lowest Pop, at an estimated 10 copies. There are plenty of Old Mill, Tolstoi, AB350w/f, and Cycle 350 front/back combos that are more scarce than any card in the AB350nf subset. But, demand for this back remains high. A few of these cards have relatively high Pop numbers, but I don’t recall seeing a single copy for sale in the last couple years. Apparently they are out there, but they don’t change hands often.
Thanks to t206resource.com for the use of their checklists.