Quote:
Originally Posted by realbigfatdog
Just wanted to post an update. I was able to land these two last night (after paying out the ass for them, ugh). Really happy to add them to my collection. My new question is this: does the S74-1 Chase come with a Red Sun or Helmar backing? There are none in the pop reports that I have found (I can't even figure out if PSA even grades these). Do any of you super advanced collectors have either of these in your collections? Or perhaps a blue ink version? I've never seen that one, either. Thanks for all of the great knowlege and help.  
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LOL
First off, great pick-ups. I was watching that lot in REA's auction that ended Sunday night, and was very surprised it went for what it did. The S74-1 Chase silk was the only one of the four white silks in that lot that had the advertising back still attached. And of the six S74-2 colored version silks in the lot, four of them, including the blue material Chase silk, are in pretty nice shape with very little, if any, fraying at the tops and bottoms of the silks. The Knight and Wolter colored silks are a different story though, with both showing significant fraying on the tops and bottoms, especially the red Wolter silk. It almost looks like someone was trying to tear off the top of that Wolter silk. So you got five really nice silks, and unfortunately five not so nice, and no HOFs. Personally, I thought that lot went for at least twice what it was worth, especially after adding in the buyers premium. Still a few nice silks to be able to grab.
The way some people are pricing S74 silks they throw up on Ebay, you may not be overpaying that much after all. Have always felt these silks are underappreciated and undervalued. Maybe that is starting to finally change though.
To directly answer your specific question, there theoretically should be Red Sun and Helmar ad-backed S74-1 white silks of Chase. Now did any of them survive till today with the advertising backs still attached, that's an entirely different story. I don't think most mainstream card collectors, especially those into the contemporary T205 and T206 sets, truly appreciate how tough it is to find S74 silks in really nice shape, and how truly hard it is to find them with with advertising backs still attached to the S74-1 silks. Turkey Red and Old Mill are the most common brands these silks were distributed with. But when it comes to Red Sun and Helmar backed S74-1 white silks, you're talking uber-rare and then literally impossible, respectively. Both brands were mainly distributed in the South, in like the Louisiana area, where heat and humidity must have reeked havoc on the cardboard backings attached to the white version silks. Don't forget, those backings were supposed to be removed, so they weren't that strongly attached to begin with.
If you want a comparable way to think of how rare Red Sun and Helmar backed silks are, think of Red Sun backed S74-1 silks maybe being on par as far as rarity with Broadleaf or Lenox brand T206s backs. As for Helmar backed silks, you're talking brown Old Mill Southern Leaguer T206 back rarity, and possibly even worse. I've heard anecdotally that only about 10 or so Helmar backed silks are even known to exist, period. I personally know of two Helmar backed Cobbs included in that surviving group, but not what players make up the other eight or so surviving Helmar silks. I would venture to say it is most likely there are no surviving Helmar backed silks of Chase, and if there are any Red Sun backed silks of him, there's maybe a couple out there at most, but I've never seen or heard of silks with either one of those backs existing for him.
And as far as looking at pop reports to get an idea of what's out there, they don't work for S74-1 silks like they do most other card issues. To answer another of your questions, PSA does not grade the S74 silks at all. I've seen a very few graded by BVG, and remember seeing some graded by GAI back when they were still around. But SGC is by far the main TPG when it comes to grading any S74 silks. But, SGC only gives numerical grades to S74-1 silks that still have the backing attached. Any white version silks without the backing get an automatic "A" grade from SGC, that is it. And so you know, most serious S74 silk collectors don't really care about grading silks, so the existing TPG pop reports aren't necessarily going to be truly representative of what's out there. Unlike cards, where you didn't want to buy a fake online, you don't really need a TPG's opinion to tell if an S74 silk is real or not. It would be pretty nigh impossible to fake one, and definitely not cost effective for someone to try. About the only thing you may want to watch out for is if someone tries to re-attach a back, or maybe take one off a common player's silk and then tries attaching it to an unbacked HOFer's silk. Any attempts I've ever seen look pretty obvious though because the backing never perfectly matches the silk itself in those cases.
And then there's the added issue that TPGs try to grade the silks like cards, which makes no sense at all. TPG numerical grades on S74 silks can be, and generally are, all over the the place, and to me, and other advanced silk collectors, such grades are practically worthless. This is borne out when you do look at the SGC pop reports for S74-1 silks. They show a total of only 23 Red Sun backed silks ever being graded, with no individual player having more than two graded examples. There are going to be more Red Sun backed silks sitting out there in private collections, just no one truly knows how many. And remember me saying there's supposedly only around ten or so Helmar backed silks still in existence? Well the SGC pop reports show only one Helmar backed silk has ever been graded, and it is of Cobb. If you go back to that S74silk.com site someone earlier posted a link to, and go to the site page for S74-1 white silks, you'll find a front and back image of that SGC graded Helmar-Cobb. The slab was cropped out.
On that same page you'll also see an example of what the Red Sun back looks like, as well as the Old Mill and Turkey Red backs. And please note there are two versions of the Turkey Red backs, one with a frame/border, and another without. The SGC pop reports show a total of eight Chase S74-1 silks with Turkey Red backs have been graded, but they don't tell you how many are with or without the frame/border. I believe you should be able to find both versions of the Turkey Red backs for Chase, but no idea how easy that may be.
As for your last question about finding an S74-1 Chase silk printed with blue ink, I don't believe one exists, regardless of what tobacco brand is on the back. There's something like 17 or so players in the S74-1 white version silk set that appear to never have had any silks printed using the blue ink at all, at least not that have the advertising backs still attached. and that includes Chase. In my earlier post I suggested you go after Chase silks in each of the three different ink colors, for each tobacco brand. But that was only in reference to the S74-2 colored version silks. That won't be possible for the S74-1 white version silks as I already noted some players appear to have not had white silks printed with certain ink colors at all, or certain ink colors might have not been printed for some players for just a particular tobacco brand(s).
Trying to do an S74-1 white silk back run for a single player is pretty near impossible. The only player that I'm actually certain this could be done for is Cobb. Don't know of any other player in the S74-1 set I can guarantee has an existing Red Sun and Helmar backed silk, as well as a Turkey Red backed silk with the border/frame. But even for Cobb, if only a couple Helmar or Red Sun backed silks exist, you aren't going to be able to have one of each of the three ink colors the silks were printed in. Sorry to maybe give you some bad news regarding a master set/back run for S74-1 Chase silks, but figured it best to let you know what you realistically could do up front. Good luck.