Scarcity of M116 backs

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Posted By: Tim Newcomb

A few more details to clarify:

Series 1 and 2 cards are found with either blue or pastel backgrounds behind the player's picture.

Series 3 cards are found with either black ink on the back, or blue ink like all the other series. Hal, the Cy Young is a Series 3 card, and so PSA indicates that yours has blue ink on the back.

Series 19-24 cards are found ONLY with 300 Subject backs.

Very occasionally you may run across a lower series card which also has this back. If these players also appear with non-"300 Subjects" backs, they are late issues, probably issued with the "Team series". These variations most frequently appear on cards of low-series players who are relatively common, and so they haven't attracted that much attention among collectors. However, they are wholly genuine and should be considered at least slightly scarce. They are not "reissues" in the sense of a later reprint.

A complete--though not wholly accurate--list of which players appear in which series can be found in Lew Lipset's article in VCBC #6. We expect that the article we're working on will clarify this question more fully.

Tim