1961 topps with green inside baseball

[steve B]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Well said.
A 'variation' is when a card company or the printer makes a purposeful change (a variety of unintended mistakes also count) to the layout of the card during or in between print runs. Name changes, adding additional information (like a player being traded or optioned) or changes to the layout and/or color scheme fit the bill. Stray flecks of color or overly inked areas do not.

If you followed the logic of many ebay sellers, then you would literally have to own every single card printed that year to have all of the so-called variations. If the same card is printed a million times with the same printing plates, there are still going to be minor differences to each and every strike. Some might say they're as unique as fingerprints.

Every time I read another idiot on ebay proclaiming "Newfound Variation!! Rare!! Look!!!" for a stray bit of color on the front of a card, I simply block their auctions from appearing in my searches.

So if a card is a doubleprint on the sheet and you can tell the two apart would that count?

Or if there were two plates and one had a small flaw but the other didn't?
How about if the plate was damaged and then replaced with a new one?

Or if a completely different ink was used?

Or a different type of cardboard?

Yeah, a lot of what those Ebay guys find are printing mistakes. But there's a load of stuff that isn't. Sometimes it's hard to tell if it's a printing error, or just where in production a mistake happened. Was that bit of dust something that got into the press and stayed for maybe only a handful of sheets? Or was it in when the plate was exposed and every card fro that plate has the flaw. Or was it between the art and camera when the negative was taken and every card should have it but it got noticed and fixed?

Just where do you draw the line?

Aside from not knowing in some cases where a small error came from I have examples of all the stuff above. Some of it can't even be scanned.

Like 93 Upper deck has 3 different sorts of back. All over gloss, gloss only on the photo, and gloss over the photo covered with a lighter overall layer.
Obviously it was done as a deliberate change.

I have an 81 fleer where there's a red line across part of the card. Not an ink smear, but from a scratch on the plate.
Obviously not deliberate.

Or this pair? Totally normal, but one is like the 62 green tints. Deliberate? Just a mistake?



Steve B