Question About 52 Topps Printing.

[con40]

Steve is dead-on regarding the production of the press plates and how an unintended element could print on the wrong plate. Removing unwanted elements on spot printing (like all pre-1992 Topps backs) is as easy as "stoning it off the plate". Often, the pressman will miss bits of the element that is why there could be a few (dozens at most) of a Campos card that shows a bit of the star...

1. Art director sees the extra black star on the card and asks for its removal.
2. Pressman stops the press, stones the star off the black plate, then restarts the press.
3. After running a few sheets, the pressman pulls a sheet to show the AD. The sheet still shows trace bits of the black star.
4. Pressman stops the press again and repeats step 2.
5. Start the press again to pull a clean sheet for approval.

Topps being a frugal company in those days, would likely have kept the error sheets in the print run to make the full sheet count knowing that the error would be corrected in the vast majority of the sheets.

If it happened like in the scenario above, the scarcity might be...

1. Red star only most common
2. Black over red scarce
3. Partial black over red very scarce

Depending on how many times the pressman had to stone the plate, there could multiple versions of Campos with varying degrees of the star visible.