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

[Statfreak101]

Originally Posted by steve5838

Awesome information and excited that another one of these turned up! Thank you Statfreak101 for the heads up on this. The week before last Statfreak101 told me about seeing this card raw in a FB group. He reached out to the person who posted the pic (a card shop owner) and found out "...it sounds like a guy brought in a collection from the 80s and 90s, and had 14 different 89 Fleer hand collated sets...and inside one of the sets was this card." I forwarded the message and picture of the ungraded card to Kevin and we both agreed that this looked exactly like our cards. I honestly spent the better part of that night trying to find the Facebook group on my own. Unfortunately, I am incompetent navigating FB and had no luck. I didn’t see the graded card until David posted the pic here. It is incredibly exciting. I wish I knew more. Were these some sort of first press run on the first day before a quality check process? Did some "fix" not make it on one of the lines at the start of the first day of production?

I agree with Hatorade that this new find reinforces the likelihood there are more of these out there. I believe this card has the staying power to be a very important card for those who love 1980s wax and crave something really scarce (of course I am biased). As I’ve mentioned before, this card and its many versions feel (at least to me) like an 80’s take on the parallels of modern collecting. The clear and blue versions are scarce in an absolute sense and hard to come by no matter how much you search – which is so much different from almost anything else from the junk wax era. Things are crazy now in all markets, but I think the fascination with this card will continue to grow as people who were kids in the 80s continue to build out their collections. I agree with Dylan that initial lack of demand for this card was likely due to lack of information on the versions and lack of knowledge about the relative scarcity. There is a learning curve for the card because searching "Randy Johnson Marlboro" on eBay returns tons of results… even though very few listings for the rarest versions come up (or stay up long).

In thinking about this card and its many versions I keep going back to ideas of scarcity and available substitutes. In person the clear one is super rare (very scare) and in person there is a dramatic difference between it and any of the tinted/obscured versions (lack of substitutes). The closest you can get is putting very intense lighting on the sign in a br2 (as I’ve done in several posts last year) but even then, not really and in person no one would ever confuse the two. I guess the other possible substitute is the magnet with a picture of the clear version someone is selling on eBay (no that isn’t me… but it keeps getting suggested to me). The blue tint ones are the same way – in that they stand out visually among others.

When I heard about this new clear one, I actually bought (2) unopened boxes of 1989 Fleer #83261 just on the off chance someone had picked up the card in a recent wax pull. Paid way too much but got caught up in the excitement! The absolute scarcity of the clear one makes it hard to assign a value. It’s no secret that I’ve toyed around with listing the card. Kevin can also vouch for me that over the last couple years I’ve offered him up to $15k for his clear one (sorry for being such a pest, Kevin). It is a strange card for sure. In that respect, I’m not surprised on the ask price. I read the book “The Card” last year and there are parallels to the chase for this and other urban legend cards (e.g., the 31 PSA graded examples of the T206 White Border Honus Wagner). Everyone has their own idea of what is valuable to them… my next "best" card in my collection is a 1990 Frank Thomas NNOF PSA 7.5. I would give that up in a heartbeat for even a PSA 4 of a clear Marlboro card.

At the end of the day definitely take it all with a grain of salt as these are just my two cents. I have no idea why this card is still such a fascination to me but love the ride.

Steve

I can't help but agree with this post. If I could "like" it, I most certainly would.

If I ever end up pulling one of these out of a pack, I certainly hope someone is there with me to catch me when I fall over!