52 Topps question on Gray Face

[callou2131]

New to vintage and have a question.One of my Pcs is Luke Easter. He was my moms favorite player while growing up. Anyway I wanted to get a few replacement cards because of condition issues. I picked up a 52 off of ebay. When I got it I saw that it had a black back. The one I had was a red back., I know that the Blacks are from the first print run. I have also heard of Gray face cards. When looking at the printing colors, I think this may be a gray face. I may get it graded. I think it is a strong 6 or may get a 7. Just wondering if the black back gray faces are more scarce, and if they carry a premium?

[ALR-bishop]

My two Easters look the same as yours. You can find slight color differences in many first series cards, usually always a function of whether they are red or black backs. On some, Glaviano, Boone and Whemeier come to mind, the differences are very noticeable. There tends to be a slight premium for black back cards.

Cards 131-180 can be found with grey or cream backs. The grey are scarce and command a big premium, and the fronts of the greys do tend to be darker and less focused than the creams

[SMPEP]

There were at least two runs of black back cards (we know this because there are Sain/Page versions with the correct back and with the wrong back).

It appears to me (and George Vrechek who wrote an article that included this point) that there are a half dozen or so cards from the black back series that were originally printed with "grey" faces, and later without the grey faces. George hypothesizes that these were corrected at the same time as the Page/Sain error (and that's as good as any theory in my book).

To my knowledge, the Easter is NOT one of the cards that had a grey face version, and I do not think the card you showed has any variation to it.

Cheers,
Patrick

[ALR-bishop]

Good info Patrick, do you have a scan or example of one of the grey faces ?

Do you know if the Super 52 set that sold in H&S included any of those. The description says (see Link in Campos thread) there were 91black backs = 11 variants, but does not list them all

[Cardboard Junkie]

I've been collecting 52's since the fifties....never heard of gray face cards. ? Dave. Examples please.

[SMPEP]

Here's the link to George's article (#4 under what else at the end is the only info on the grey faces):
http://www.oldbaseball.com/refs/5253printing.html

honestly, I don't consider this much of a variation. I have a few that are arguably the grey faces but the differences are so subtle that I do not consider them true variations (and both Boone and Kretlow have much bigger variations). I think the Crandall face variation is more obvious and distinct ... and that one is hard to spot too.

I don't know exactly what was included in the master set as variations for the black backs, but the Boone, Kretlow and Wehmeier are undoubtedly three of them (in addition to page/sain). Probably the Parnell as well.

Cheers,
Patrick

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

My two Easters look the same as yours. You can find slight color differences in many first series cards, usually always a function of whether they are red or black backs. On some, Glaviano, Boone and Whemeier come to mind, the differences are very noticeable. There tends to be a slight premium for black back cards.

Cards 131-180 can be found with grey or cream backs. The grey are scarce and command a big premium, and the fronts of the greys do tend to be darker and less focused than the creams

Al,

It doesn't really say. Here is the HS link for the auction:

http://www.hugginsandscott.com/cgi-b...l?itemid=59354

The description mentions 2 catalogued variations in the and 9 uncatalogued variations in black backs 1st series. The description also notes there were "29 color/print" variants in the set.

Z Wheat