With advance apologies to those who think that T206s are the only set worth discussing, I present a surprising new (at least to me) discovery. I picked up this Demmit on ebay a couple weeks ago. I saw the plate scratch on an E90-1 for the first time. Strange, as I've been collecting the set for more than 30 years.
I immediately thought of the remakable work done by Pat, Steve and others on the T206 sheets and wondered if scratches could help unravel the mysteries of the E90-1 distribution. For decades, E90-1 has been thought of as a three series issue; the first in late 1908 to early 1909, the second as 1910 and a third in 1911. This is clearly inadequate to explain the varying levels of difficulty among the cards. I have postulated at least eight separate "printings" with additions, deletions and replacements along the way.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the scratches. I checked my set and dupes (125 cards in total), hoping to find a few more. And I did.
Much to my amazement, the Demmit I already had, had a different scratch.
This is causing me to rethink some of the theories I've been developing. Demmit was either double printed on one sheet or printed on two separate sheets. I also found four others, three of which fit the pattern of scarcity I was expecting:
Gray
Joss (throwing)
And Tenney
These three are less common than most (as is Demmit) and I was not surprised that they could be sheetmates.
I was very surprised at the last subject, Bailey
Bailey is among the most common E90-1s, surely in the top five. Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that all of these subjects were printed on the same sheet. There could have been multiple sheets with scratches.
Enough for now. I need two things from the board: 1) everyone drop what you're doing and inspect your E90-1s and report any additions you find; and 2) someone with the time and photoshop skills to replicate Pat's extraordinary t206 analysis and apply it to this wonderful set. Regretably, I have neither.
Looking forward to everyone's comments and suggestions.