Mystery of T206 Old Mill Southern Leagues Factory Overprint backs

T206museum.com (Feb 10, 2007)

Old Mill is a common T206 back printed in black, and was issued throughout T206 set's distribution. In general, there are two different type of Old Mill backs. The first advertises Old Mill cigarettes, and was issued with major and minor league players. The second Old Mill back can only be found with 48 Southern Leagues players and specifically promotes the Southern, South Atlantic, Texas and Virginia Leagues.

T206 Old Mill Southern Leagues backs are commonly printed in black, but a few specimens were printed in brown and can only be found on Southern Leagues players. Although, the black and brown colors are not as easy to distinguish as brown and red color variations on Hindu backs, one can still tell the different by bare eyes. These brown Old Mill Southern Leagues backs are just a recent found in the early 2000's, they are still not fully recognised by most collectors. Similar to the Lenox brown variations, some collectors think these brown specimens are just faded version of regular black backs but that's a misconception. Brown Old Mill backs are exceedingly rare and a lot tougher to obtain than Lenox brown and Hindu Red. The scarcity order of them are between Ty Cobb back and Broad Leaf Series 460.

Old Mill (Black) Factory 25 District 2 - State VA	Old Mill SL (Black) Factory 25 District 2 - State VA	Old Mill SL (Brown) Factory 25 District 2 - State VA

Besides the debate of whether these T206 Old Mill Southern Leagues brown backs are real color variations or just faded version of regular black backs. Back in the mid 90's, there was a couple interesting Old Mill Southern Leagues found with unusual factory overprint bar(s) printed on the back. Such factory overprint bar(s) normally found on Sweet Caporal Series 150 Factory 649 backs and used for covering the original Factory 30 line.

Old Mill SL (Red Factory Overprint) Factory 649 District 1 - State NY	Old Mill SL (Black Factory Overprint) Factory 649 District 1 - State NY	Old Mill SL (Double Factory Overprints) Factory 649 District 1 - State NY

There is no solid explanation of how such Sweet Caporal factory overprint bar could got printed on Old Mill Southern Leagues backs. One of the explanations was some Old Mill Southern Leagues back sheets were used as ink and/or overprint alignment tests in the printing factory. And a few of them were even used for multiple times and created the double overprints variations. Interestingly enough, these factory overprint bar(s) could be found in red and black color. In addition, red factory overprint bar(s) were found on brown Old Mill Southern back and black factory overprint bar(s) were found on Old Mill Southern black back.

There are four known specimens exist and two of them have been graded by PSA. If anyone has an Old Mill Southern factory overprint bar(s) specimen, please contact us and we will add it into the known population.