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Posted By: J Levine

Jay,
Honestly, I think that American Beauties are more plentiful than what I have seen as well. They just do not come up for sale that often...I have seen the same American Beauty (black) Stone come up for sale at least four times this year. In my personal collection, I have 4 blacks and 3 greens. I think that collectors like you and I also tend to seek out the rarer backs and buy them for our sets whereas older collectors and orginal collections just did not do that...If you look at my set, I now have 7 Piedmont 42 backs because I tend to buy them and replace the other backs whenever I can because I still feel they are unrecognized as a rarity.

I also feel that Honest Long Cut is not as rare as the research portrays either but again, they have not come up for sale in the past few years as much as other backs (although did make a small jump this year).

All my fairly unscientific casual observations and opinions and dissenting opinions are certainly welcome.

Joshua