[Archive]

Posted By: Ed McCollum

Since the posting of the Old Mill overstrike images on the older Mastronet auction thread, it has really bothered me to see exactly what it was people were calling this rare back type. So, since it is the week before Christmas, and things are pretty slow around my office, I took my own beaters, scanned each of the backs I have (I left out the Polar Bear, as it would be impossible to overstrike a solid back) and tried to find any match for the placement and size of the overstrike shown on the scans provided.

(I used one of the provided scans, deleted the background of the card, except for the overstrike information and an outline of the card holder it is in, changed the color to an obnoxious green so it would show up well against almost everything except American Beauty’s, and put it as a layer over each back type in Photoshop)

None match up if you just turn the card right side up. In terms of the bar being long enough to cover the original factory designation and still fit in a space without hitting a border, other information, etc., the only one that fits is the Sweet Cap back. The bar on the overprint version of the Old Mill as shown is too short by one character on each side of the bar to cover the current factory information.

I would like to be able to work with higher res scans to show how this just doesn’t work, for for the sake of making sure this still loads on the site, and using the scans provided on the previous thread, this is the best I could do.

Again, I’m not ripping the owners of the overstrike Old Mills, or the originality or unique qualities of their cards; I’m just questioning whether it is a back type, or a bad day at the print shop.




Ed