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Originally Posted by Baseball Rarities
Hi Brian - Thanks for the response, but I should have worded my question better. All of these cards come from a single M101-4 find, but the toning on them threw me off. I have always associated cards like these with the M101-5 set, but these are M101-4s. I was curious how common it is to find M101-4s with this sort of toning.
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Kevin,
Your examples are the exception to the rule, and show how subtle the differences can be between the two sets. Maybe you shouldn’t bet with confidence when seeing a toned back
In short, telling the difference is an inexact science. Fortunately, it only comes into play when trying to decide in which set the otherwise 27 identical-looking cards belong. For those who don’t know, these would be card #s 1-7; 65-71; 141-153 and 198-200 (excluding #s 2, 145 and 146, which have caption changes). Frankly, since Ruth, Rixey and Alexander are the only players of any real significance within that group, I haven’t spent a lot of thought trying to discern the toning differences on the others. I can just say that having hundreds of these cards scanned and viewed side by side, one can see that in general, m101-5 cards tend to tone or “age” differently, whether due to slight stock differences or otherwise, at least among the blank backs. It has been my belief that because there were multiple print runs of each set and possibly different printers or print times, chances are that slightly different stock was used.
I will try to give a more in depth explanation review of the toning differences later but would like to point out another “tell” from the group you posted. Several m101-4 advertisers and some m101-4 blanks have cards with a processing anomaly not found in m101-5 (at least I don’t recall seeing it), and your posted group shows this trait. Specifically, these show one or often two light pressure line indentations that can be found in basically the same spots: a horizontal line about 40% down the card and a vertical line extending from the bottom about 15% from the right side. Here is a Walsh as an example–you can see the lines although they are not overly distracting (to me anyway):
Look closely and you can see the horizontal line on several of the cards in the group you posted, and the vertical line on at least the Rucker. Again, none of the m101-5s seem to have this condition, whether blank-backed or advertisers, so it is a good indicator that a card displaying it is from m101-4.