In August of 2012, word started circulating on net54baseball.com that an Old Mill with blue ink had been found at the National. Initially most people thought it was a joke, but within a couple days a picture was posted of the card inside an SGC holder. Many long-time collectors who had inspected it in person agreed that it looked legitimate. SGC thought enough of the card to label it as a “Blue Back”. At this point, many forum members who had only viewed camera phone pictures deferred to the collectors who had seen the card in person. Still, many were not convinced. Some thought the card looked good but that the ink could have faded or been exposed to chemicals. A member posted a reprint Old Mill back which had been printed with blue ink side-by-side with the back of the Walsh (shown below). There were also a small group of posters who agreed the heavy and even rounding of the corners gave them pause, as many artificially aged reprints exhibit suspiciously even corner rounding.
In December 2012, the card showed up for auction via Huggins and Scott. It debuted with a hefty $15,000 minimum bid. It sold but only received one bid. The story died down a bit after that. In November 2013, the card showed up for auction again, this time via Heritage Auctions. It sold for $14,340 this time. Forum posters noted how the new owner had listed it on Heritage’s website with a $30,000 price tag. At this point, the card kind of fell off the face of the earth. People stopped talking about it, and it hasn’t been offered for sale since. When the discovery was first publicized, collectors everywhere pulled out their Old Mill backs to give them another look, just in case they might have a blue back. Nobody found one. It’s hard to imagine that only one single card from a factory-cut sheet would have survived. It’s absolutely possible of course, just unlikely. If you look closely at the edges of this card, you can make the case that it was originally hand-cut. If it was, that would make a lot of sense. If a sheet was printed with blue ink and then scrapped, you would expect most cards on the sheet would have remained in the garbage and star players like Walsh would be most likely to survive.
There is no question that the front of this card is legit. It shares some printing flaws with a few other Walsh cards printed in 1910. T206 back collector Scott Stiffler posted this comparison of his card (the SGC 40) with the Blue Old Mill to show the print anomalies that the two cards share. They both have a weak border on the left and right sides and little red dots on the “I” in Chicago and on his forehead. The Piedmont 350 below exhibits the same weak border on the right hand side as well as the red dot at the top of the “I”.
Controversy is likely to follow this card until another Old Mill with Blue Ink is found (if that ever happens). I tend to trust the advanced collectors who have held it and pronounced it the real deal. I also trust that SGC would have done their due diligence in making sure the card was not re-backed or altered in any way that could be detected. My biggest concern about the card personally is this: If it were re-backed, it would probably look just like this because the person who did it would want to round the corners to try and smooth the edges and avoid detection.
I’d love to see it in person someday. Until then, I’ll remain the slightest bit skeptical, like most others who have only seen the scans online.