E90-1 Miller Red Sunset Variation

[abroome]

This is my own unscientific theory as to why we have “with sunset” and “without sunset” E90-1 Miller cards.
The image of Dots Miller fielding with the red sunset in the background is used on a number of sets (E92, E101, E102, E105, E106, T216). Each of these cards feature the red sunset in the background in the image. The shadow behind his feet found on cards from these sets that share the Miller image was not added to the E90-1 design.

All of the E90-1 with sunset Millers I have seen all seem to have a sunset that is consistently off register almost exactly the same.
If you look at the red portion of ink closely, the plate was made to “fit” around the image of Miller. You can clearly see the cutaway that is supposed to fit around his body and it is shifted off to the left.
For whatever reason, the plate was made off-centered when the design was made for the E90 set and the sunset runs over his body and arm.
From my experience with studying printing processes, I do not think this is a random registry problem that happened on a few sheets. I think the mistake is consistent on all the examples I have seen and would be an actual problem created when the plate or stone for red was created.

I believe this mistake was noticed by the lithographer but was not easily fixable, nor was it feasible to re-cut a new plate with better alignment. The solution was to remove the sunset portion of the red plate completely and keep printing. To me, this type of error would be a quality issue that would bug a printer more than fixing a team error, etc.
This probably would have happened early in the first run or after the first run was complete but I do not know that for sure.
From what I have seen, the more common card is “without sunset.” If my theory is correct, that would make the “without sunset” the common corrected version.
The problem I have run into is it is hard to get an accurate gauge because the cards just don't come up that often on the market. As we know, E cards as a whole seem to be scarcer than T cards. That's part of the reason we still have more to learn about E cards like the E90-1’s.

I am building the E90-1 set and I would love to see more discussion about the set around here. It seems some the rarities of this set are overlooked because many newer collectors just don't know much about this set. Not much has been written about the E90's, not in comparison to T sets.
I personally think some of the other rarities of this set are pretty close in scarcity as the Mitchell is.


Andy