Blue front 1958 Hank Aaron

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by brewing

Put me in the camp that believes the ones that have been in the hobby when it was considered a negative are from fading and the newer ones are from the same or intentional fading.

This is what I believe also. I have never seen a real non faded one and ALL the pictures of them I have seen including the ones in this thread have the signs of "fading".

One of the things I look for in a real missing yellow card or one that has been faded is if there is any yellow at all left. In my experience yellow shows up in a picture better than it does on the card in hand. A faint even yellow is a big red flag for me. Like in the logo of every card pictured in this thread. On all the real light yellow printed cards I have seen the yellow in not as even with lighter/darker spots in it as the ink runs out in the press. I know we have a couple others with printing experience please add your experience also.

The Mantle pictured below is an example of what a card looks like before the press completely runs out of ink. It is a patchy yellow not a faint even yellow. It is easiest to see in the words Valuable Players.

I also want to point out I am not trying to put anybodys card(s) down I am just trying to save error collector's a lot of money by not buying altered cards.