Error variations vs. Print Variations: 1990 Fleer Martinez

[jacksoncoupage]

Originally Posted by West

"The card, a 1990 Fleer Dave Martinez, turned out to be so rare that it was never listed in any of the major price guides, even well after the turn of the millennium. Though the internet has finally confirmed their collective existence, it’s still unclear how many copies of the card exist, and they’re sold so rarely that there’s no way to know how much they’re worth. This is the event horizon of the error card: at some point a card becomes so rare that it becomes invisible, and therefore worthless.

And so the card, with its very yellow 90, will sit in my garage, waiting for the day when the remaining collectors convene and decide that it’s worth buying. And when that day comes, I’ll have finally won that trade I made twenty years ago."

Am I quoting back a participator in this thread? This was a great article and I quite enjoyed reading it. I would note that another paradox of error and variation collecting is that if you bring more recognition to a certain error card, you increase the odds that some will surface, but you also increase the chances that someone else will outbid you for it.

The article is not correct: the card has been listed in the guides (even monthly Becketts) throughout the 90s. I believe it was noted with “VAR1” or some other unusual abbreviation. At some point (maybe 90s annual guides) they added the “yellow ‘90” note in parenthesis. Not to mention that it has been cataloged in the Dick Gilkeson guide as far back as 1990.

That said, I feel certain that a small chunk of 1990 Fleer printed with an obstruction to the magenta plate where the ‘90 would strike. All cards were printed with yellow and magenta to produce the red ‘90. It’s also perhaps worth noting that Fleer utilized two separate printing facilities for this product and from all research I’ve compiled, this card only came from specific packaging type from one of the two. In other words, this card wasn’t simply an “early correction” but instead, a correction made to a very specific chunk of the run, isolated from the rest.