1987 Fleer Glossy Brown backs

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by HasselhoffsCheeseburger

Al, just to double-check: you found yours in a Glossy set, right? You just said Fleer so I want to make sure.

The cards are identical on the front (in terms of gloss and color) and feel the same on the back (in terms of card stock). They were all sealed in the same tin under the same conditions so I don't think these are the result of after-factory conditions.

The Fleer Glossy sets (and perhaps the regular Fleer factory sets, I don't know, I haven't ripped any of them yet) are laid out in 12 blocks of 55 cards. The 12 blocks alternate coming from two different sources at the factory and are also either right-side up or upside down. All the upside down blocks come from one source and all the right-side up blocks come from another source. So, if you pull out the first upside down block and they're all heavily off-center toward the top, that problem is going to continue into the next block of upside down cards, even though there's a right-side up block between them. Make sense?

I assume the individual blocks come from the same sheet. I just checked and Rick Aguilera, Carney Lansford, and Jose Canseco (my two brown backs) are all on the same sheet. I suppose it's possible that a bunch of copies of the same sheet were printed on card stock meant for a different '87 Fleer product.

The '87 Fleer basketball cards have a white back.
The '87 Fleer Star Stickers don't have a bright white back but they also don't look like these brown backs either. More of an off-white.
The '87 Fleer Exciting Stars are white back.
The '87 Fleer Game Winners are white back.
The '87 Fleer Award Winners have a tan/orange but it's only half the card back and the other half is bright white so I'm assuming the stock started as white and the color was applied later.
The '87 Fleer Record Setters are white back.
The '87 Fleer Baseball's Best are white back.
The '87 Fleer Hottest Stars are white back.
The '87 Fleer League Leaders are white back.
The '87 Fleer Limited Edition are white back.
The '87 Fleer Mini are white back.

So back to the drawing board. Obviously the sheet was printed on a different stock than the rest of the set but why and how much are the questions. Had to have been a decent amount for me to hit two sets in a row and for Al's set to also have one. That's one hell of a coincidence otherwise.

Arthur

Do you know if Wade Boggs is on that sheet? If so that is another card I need to track down.

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

I just did a google image search for 1987 fleer uncut sheet and looked at the first handful. Should be an easy lookup.

Arthur

ETA: Just went back to pull an image for reference and there's no Boggs on the sheet.

[ALR-bishop]

Arthur- The set I have is not a factory set so probably not glossy, but my Aguilar card does look to me to have the same brownish back as in your scans

On a side note, I have no variations for this set. Are you aware of any ( this back issue aside ) ?

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Wow. So it's not even isolated to just the Glossy cards. This is fascinating.

I don't know of any errors or variations in the '87 Fleer set. I just quickly did a pass on BBCpedia and they only list some UER (all incorrect birth years on the back).

I'm going to keep buying sets to rip so I'll keep updating this thread on what I find.

Arthur

[ALR-bishop]

Here is the contrast in the backs from cards 1 and 2 in my set

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

This is so bizarre. The three cards are from the same sheet but so far each set has only yielded one brown back card each. You would think if it were as simple as the wrong sheets getting loaded into the printer we would see more than one brown back per set. This truly is a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

Arthur

[ALR-bishop]

A conundrum of some proportions