Monday 4/17/2017:
Continuing with the recent theme of examining print oddities and errors, here is a Donie Bush with rare Broad Leaf 350 back that has a unique print error. The area directly to the left of his glove appears to be missing the gray ink for his uniform, and as a result it looks pink to the naked eye. As of now, this is the only known copy of Bush with a Broad Leaf 350 back, so there aren’t any others to compare this one to.
However, I was chatting with a friend about this card, and he sent me this scan, of a Donie Bush Carolina Brights that he once owned. Note the the print defect in exactly the same spot. I had examined a high resolution scan of the Broad Leaf and was convinced that the spot was missing ink, rather than altered in some way. Often, when you see mark that looks like this, it will have been created by a eraser. This Carolina Brights scan serves as a nice confirmation that both cards were printed with the pink spot at the factory.
Upon being alerted as to the existence of this Carolina Brights card, I began to scour the internet looking for other examples with the same “pink spot”. What I found was quite surprising. So far, I have not found a single copy of Bush with a common back that exhibits the flaw. No Piedmont, Sweet Caporal, Polar Bear, Old Mill, or Sovereign backs that I found had the “pink spot”. However, the lone Cycle 350 that I found did have it:
Wednesday 4/19/2017:
After finding the Cycle 350 scan, I spent the next couple days looking for other examples of the “pink spot”. I posted a thread on net54 asking for scans and reached out to a few friends. The net54 query paid off immediately when long-time back collector Brian Weisner reached out to me with scans of the Carolina Brights above, and an American Beauty below, which does not have the print flaw. Brian told me that the “pink spot” appears on 2 of the 5 Donie Bush Carolina Brights that are known to exist.
At that point, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t find any common backs with the print flaw, but that changed when Pat Romolo joined the search. Pat is the foremost expert in T206 Print Oddities/Anomalies. Many of you are probably familiar with Pat’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Project (ironically the thread was started by Steve Birmingham, who is the foremost expert on the printing process(es) used to create T206s) . If not, you should definitely check it out.
Pat noted that Bush shares the same back profile as George McBride. McBride has a print anomaly that Pat has been following, which he he has dubbed the “blue flame”. McBride’s print anomaly has been found on the following backs:
So, theoretically with enough searching we may be able to find the “pink spot” anomaly on these same five backs above. Later in the afternoon, Pat emailed me with the following scan:
At that point, my theory that the “pink spot” would only be found with the rarest backs was proven incorrect. I’ll keep my eye out for more copies with this anomaly, and possibly post an update sometime in the future. As of now, I have not seen a scan of a Piedmont 350 with the “pink spot” but based on the existence of the SC 350/30 above, I imagine there are some out there.