E103 Question Regarding Handcut or "Scrap" Examples

[shammus]

Hi David! Hope all is well. I remember selling you a couple of your early e103s a couple years back and I'm thrilled you're still working on the set.

To answer your question of "where you might have heard that e103s had handcut examples..."...I believe that sounds like something that was brought up on a phone conversation we had at one point. I'm going to be in the minority here but I do believe that handcut e103s exist.

Generally speaking, e103s, as well as it's sister-sets - e107s and 1921 Oxfords - are exceptionally clean issues all around. Meaning, I've never seen a printing goof on an e107 or Oxford and I've only seen three oddities from the e103 set. The three that I've seen (and owned) are listed here -

1. Handcut Jennings with an exceptionally huge lower left corner causing the borders to be oversized when measuring

2. Handcut Donovan with the top half of the card appearing much wider than normal to the point where the card takes on the shape of a "trapezoid"

3. Doyle with a slight color pass shift.

I owned the Jennings and Donovan when I completed the e103 set for my first go around. I always regretted letting those two cards go but they were part of a complete set and had to go with the other 28 cards when I sold it...heh! The Donovan I recently reacquired and am thrilled to have it back to go along with the Doyle that's still in my collection. I'm still on the lookout for the Jennings though.

So, Donovan and Jennings would certainly qualify as handcut in my opinion. Both have exceptionally wavy borders and when the borders are oversized, it's a dead giveaway. I can't say these were considered "scrap" but maybe! I believe they were pulled out of the print run for one reason or another and cut up manually, but they don't seem to exhibit any sort of flaw that would make me think they were pulled out with the intention of "scrapping" or throwing away.

Here's a couple scans of the two e103 oddities I have. Like I said...they're few and far between. Are they worth a premium? Maybe to someone who goes after oddities such as myself, but like someone else said earlier, cards with oversized borders tend to end up in SGC A holders which limits their value substantially.

Hope this helps! Feel free to reach out with any questions