Red to Orange in c. 1910 T and E cards.

[G1911]

The most common "misprint" seen in these cards is cards that should be red, but appear orange. Sometimes, if they picture a baseball HOFer, they sell for huge premiums.

However, they are, at least in the vast majority of cases, not misprints at all. They didn't leave the factory that way. Exposure and some storage conditions will fade the red ink to appear orange, with little or no effect on the other colors. The red ink, for a reason I am sure Steve or someone else is better able to explain, is very susceptible to fading. It is also the easiest to doctor, but I would rather not, for the obvious reasons, delve into exactly how one can do this in a lot less time than using the sun.

Since this stemmed from an E77 Wolgast, I will use boxing examples here, beginning with it as an illustration of the difference. Note that one is obviously red, and one is obviously orange in the background. You can also see (I hope, I'm capped to ~200KB pictures max here), that the red in his skin toning is lighter on the orange example. Note the yellow ink layer's slight misalignment in the background on both, more extreme in the red card. Differences in colors other than red are essentially non-existent. The black is ever so slightly darker on the orange "misprint", the blue slightly darker on the red card.