1989 Fleer Randy Johnson #381 Marlboro Errors - 30 Years Later

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by jacksoncoupage

I’ve been closely following the surge in 1989 Fleer case breaking over the last several months and a few things have become very clear RE: the Randy Johnson card:
1. All correction types/methods took place by January 1st. No 1989 dated case has turned out a non-full blacked out version.
2. Several types of corrections will come from the same case. This is very interesting to me as I previously had assumed that since Fleer had used two printing facilities for this product, that was the cause for the color tints.
But now I am convinced that Fleer had multiple presses running (perhaps at both plants) and each press had a different type of correction to the plate; for example: say they had four presses going, one would have a green mask over the sign, one a red box, etc etc. This is the only way I can explain the various versions coming out of specific day dated cases.

This sounds pretty similar to my experience with opening packs. We haven’t opened a ton but I would guess around 40-50 boxes. The cases would contain multiple different versions with maybe a couple cards being the same version or very similar. I think there are some cases though where you will pull multiple cards that are the same. I can recall several times when I’ve purchased cards in lots and every card in the lot was nearly identical. The largest lot I recall purchasing was 7 of the same cards.

Originally Posted by Statfreak101

Good stuff.
I just pulled my first rack pack with a Johnson variation on top - black box, and it wasn't during the time period that we all though it "should" be.

That’s awesome! Would you mind sharing a image of that rack pack? You are the 2nd person to mention getting an error variation past the Jan 1 89 threshold. The other person is an RJ collector that reached out to me on Facebook and mentioned that he pulled an error version of the Johnson from a box that contained the correct Ripken FF card. I have opened lots of wax boxes that contained the common version of the Johnson with the error Ripken but never the other way around but it sounds like maybe a few RJ errors may have snuck into some of the 89 cases.