(LOT 15)
1909-11 T206 Ed Greminger Brown Old Mill with Rare Ad Back Overprint PSA Authentic – The Only Known Overprint Brown Old Mill!
UNIQUE BROWN OLD MILL OVERPRINT!!! This extraordinary and unique PSA Authentic T206 Brown Old Mill Ed Greminger just happens to include a bold red overprint line on its already extremely scarce verso. The only known Brown Old Mill example boasting an overprint ad back also includes the following upside-down verbiage directly beneath the red overprint: "FACTORY No. 649 – 1st DIST.N.Y." Aside from the exalted "Ty Cobb King of the Smoking World" ad back, no T206 advertisement is considered scarcer than a Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguer. The well-respected T206 Resource website documents that notion, with the Brown Old Mill ad back listed as the second rarest of all 39 T206 advertisements.

Locating any Brown Old Mill subject is synonymous with finding a needle in a haystack, with the T206 Resource website confirming the following 14 known Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers: Bernhard; Foster; Greminger; Helm; Hooker; Jordan; Kiernan; Mullaney; Paige; Reagan; Revelle; Smith; Thornton; and Violat. Most significantly, while there are only one or two documented examples for each of these 14 Brown Old Mill players, this one of a kind Brown Old Mill Overprint is the only such example listed on any professional grading Pop Chart or, to the best of our knowledge, within any private collection. Regarding their mistaken inception, one particular theory is that Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers were issued directly after Brown Hindu subjects, whereby the Hindu brown ink was not changed to black before manufacturing the Old Mill subjects. Thus, a handful of Brown Old Mill examples were issued on non-cut factory scrapper sheets, never being inserted into cigarette packs.

This resulted in the few existing Brown Old Mill subjects revealing manually cut edges (most likely by factory workers who saved the scrapper sheets) and PSA/SGC Authentic grades. Although this concept is certainly not a bona fide conclusion, it certainly makes the most sense, and while hobbyists may never achieve 100% resolution for the true advent of Brown Old Mill issues, their utmost paucity level is etched in stone. While this remarkable keepsake reveals poor aesthetics due to several glaring diagonal creases (including one running directly through Greminger's classic portrait pose) as well as severe corner layering, it is the right to own a copy of this one and only known overprint example that steals the show. To reiterate, the Authentic assessment is due to all T206 Brown Old Mill subjects being manually cut from their original factory-issued scrapper sheets, with this miraculous tobacco treasure showcasing the SOLE Brown Old Mill Overprint ad back extant!

MIN BID $5,000
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