Beer bet about 69 grilles

Did the cores start black and then painted argent (silver) for standard cars, or were there seperate colors for black and argent. Seems black was a much lower demand item. I do know that black should be black through and through and not painted.

Someone claims the factory painted them silver over black cores. When I see broken grilles, they look silver through and through. The notion the factory would paint them silver seems counterproductive in my opinion since black was a much lower demand....