[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by seablaster

I guess the blue Old Mill Ed Walsh is "persona non grata" in these type of discussions.

Originally Posted by hpkatz26

Actually the rarest T-206 back is the BLUE old mill back. Only 3 are known to exist. It's strange that no one except one responder noted that. Maybe this was due to the date of the initiating post. But no back collection will ever be complete without one! Happy collecting!

Originally Posted by wnp22

What is the deal with blue Old Mills? How did they come to be? Are they just considered scrap?

Interestingly, when determining a rarity list of the T206 backs, only cards that were inserted into packs count in the list. So Southern League Brown Old Mills would not count because they were all hand cut and were never put into packs. Same thing for Blank Backs. The Ty Cobb back is also a difficult one to count, since there's really nothing but opinions that it is or is not a T206. I vote no, because all T206 subsets contain multiple cards. I believe at the time, it was just a promotional bonus that went with the Tin and they decided to use the Red Background Portrait of Ty Cobb which was also used in other sets. But being a T206 collector doesn't mean that I hate any of these other cards. Many of them belong right beside the T206 cards but not in the T206 cards. Cards such as the Ty Cobb Back, Red Cross, Coupon Type 1, and even the Pirate backs belong next to the T206's because they share history when they decided to use the same card fronts. There's probably a couple I missed.

So the question is, what back is the rarest? It needs to be a T206. It needs to have been inserted into the packs. Scraps don't count because they were never inserted into the packs. Same thing with hand cut cards. They are scraps. But then we get to the "Blue Old Mill". They are all T206's. They have no sign of being hand cut and look to be cards that were inserted into packs. Nobody has an issue calling the Lenox Brown and Lenox Black, individual T206 subsets. Even the Southern League Brown Old Mills are a T206 subset but everyone is aware that they were all hand cut so they fall into the scrap category but are still a welcomed T206 subset.

When the first "Blue Old Mill" was discovered and put up for auction, it was a 50/50 split that it was even real. Some thought maybe a real front was attached to a fake Blue back. Some thought it was treated with some sort of chemical that turned the black ink blue. I even wasn't sure about it. I had never seen it in person and never saw a clean scan with a closeup scan comparing it to a black ink Old Mill. I basically had to take the word of a few that saw it in person, the auction house, and the third party grader. Many were extremely skeptical because over a 100 years and this is the only one found. I totally understand. Then a couple years passed and a second one was discovered. The crazy thing was it was discovered by me, in my own collection. I wasn't looking for one. I was actually looking for a print defect on EPDG cards. But my collection is in alphabetical order so I was flipping past all the different backs until I got to a EPDG to see if it had the print defect. Nearing the end of my search, the next handful had an Old Mill back on top. It looked kinda different but it wasn't really jumping out at me. I pulled it out from the handful of cards and continued searching for EPDG's. When I was finally done with the EPDG search, I took another look at the Old Mill. I first compared it to another Old Mill and there was a difference in color. At the time, I was buying more Old Mill's than other backs. No real reason why, I just get hooked on a certain topic for a month or two and then move on to something else. So I put the odd looking Old Mill into a pile of about 30 other Old Mill's and asked non baseball card people to look at the backs and remove any that seem different in any way. I even had my own mother do this. They all pulled out the same card from the group of cards. I asked my mother why she chose that one. She said it looks more blue than any of the other cards. So at this point, I was a little more convinced that I had a Blue Old Mill but still was very far from 100 percent sure. Then I decided to put it under the USB microscope which I have only used for coins. This was the first time I ever put a baseball card under the microscope. What I saw, made me 100 percent sure I had a Blue Old Mill. I was so sure, that I decided to make a YouTube video showing everything and comparing it with a regular Black Ink Old Mill. I swapped the sides they were on. I did everything I possibly could in the video to show there was no funny business going on. Even after the video was made and uploaded, I originally thought it was Polar Bear Blue Ink but a few days later, comparing it to other cards from the same timeframe, it actually turned out to be a perfect match for Piedmont Blue. Piedmont's come in a few shades of blue but when comparing it to Piedmonts that would have been printed during the same time as the Blue Old Mill, I found a perfect match. So now I knew they were both from Print Group One and printed with Piedmont Blue Ink. I didn't need anymore convincing for myself. I felt that I took the research as far as I could and shared it to the world. Not too long after uploading my YouTube video, a third one surfaced, which is currently in the REA auction. The pictures are much better than when the Walsh was auctioned. I could at least tell it was the same shade of blue that mine was. It would be interesting if one day at a future National show, we could get all three of these cards together. And who knows, maybe by that time a fourth one could show up. I still haven't looked at any of mine and there's between 50 and 60 Old Mill's from Print Group One. So number 4 could just be sitting in a box waiting for me to search for them and closely check each one. So back to the original question. What's the rarest T206 back. At this point in time, I would have to say the Blue Old Mill. But that's just my opinion.

YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/p5qUHZQLeFw