I collect printing errors too, and there's several ways a card can be missing a color.
Press out of ink, one color section of the press not engaged, Sheet mis fed through the press (Either partiallly fed, or double feed) Printed through some obstruction like a part of a mangled sheet, small bit of paper etc. Or the sheet just didn't get run through for that color.
Some of those aren't possible with some processes, And I'm not entirely sure which ones were used at what times. For example sheet fed presses vs web fed presses, or one color press vs multi color press. I'd guess that the change to web fed happened around 1992. And at one point I know topps printed sheets that were double what is usually considered a sheet (2 sheets of 132 side by side)
I have a card that was the corner card from a marker sheet. With a sheet fed press a group of sheets , maybe 10 or so are used to adjust the press. The last one is a marker to allow the pres operator to keep the setup sheets separate. Thy usually do this by tearing a corner off. The card I have shows printing in the torn section. I saw tha sheet it came from, and wanted the whole thing but it was just too much for me at the time.
or the plate can be made wrong
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