What is the origin of Barry Bonds Open.Day ERR?

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by glynparson

Every error I have owned about 5-6 i don't remember came from someone who pulled from a set not one person i talked to pulled both versions. Not sure how you got lucky. they were in extremely early cases this was caught almost instantly. Bonds also was nowhere near the big prospect at the time. They would have clearly picked someone else if this was intentional and done with an upcoming prospect. Ah the internet everything is a conspiracy.

Not saying anything was intentional. Frankly, Bonds was a highly touted rookie, the son of a Major League player, he had speed and power, was the God-son of Willie Mays, etc. A Bonds error or variation would have been far more valuable than a Johnny Ray error which is what this card apparently is, based on my and other peoples' experiences.

I do not recall if there was a corrected Ray card in the set that included my error. I suspect not, after reading all the posts in this thread. I know there was a corrected Bonds as he was one of the cards I was pulling on that break.

It was a cheap basically garbage set when I bought my cases. I pulled the stars and rookies, like Bonds, all the Twins and Tigers because the Twins sets were sold to Shinders (a local magazine/baseball card shop chain in Mpls.) and I had a couple buyers who always wanted my Tigers team sets. But what made the break work was that I was also helping Larry Grossman (Hygrade) by putting together 25-card packs of stars (minor non-premium guys like Winfield, Molitor, Fisk, and so on.) I basically got 2 cents each on all those. Plus Larry was taking all my commons at about half a cent per card. Add to that, the fact it was a simple break with all cards in sequence so I could do them all myself fairly quickly, and it was mildly profitable; definitely worthwhile.

In the end I had exactly 600 Bonds cards (6 100-card lots.)

Sorting that way, shuffling past the commons to the next pull card, I did not notice or care if the corrected Johnny Ray card was there or not. Same with any other common. Again, based on the comments here, the error Ray was probably in place of what should've been a corrected Ray.

What always made me wonder, though, is why there was only one in 600 sets. And I was definitely looking for it. I could see having 39 cases with none and then one case with 15 errors, or something like that, but how did just one error card set end up in that case? As has been pointed out, one would think the error, once caught, would no longer be made.

One other thing I remember - that was the smelliest set I ever broke, to the point where after a few hours, I actually felt a bit ill. Whether it was the smell of fresh ink or the plastic I'm not sure, but it was really an awful smell. Always made me think my cases may have been from a recent print run.