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

[JoeDfan]

Just when I thought I was out...you guys pull me back in!!!!!!!!!!

Now I have to find this version too. Or my collection cannot be complete.

I gotta stop reading these posts!

Lol.

Sean

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by bnorth

The very slight differences will drive you crazy with these cards. I have started to catalog them several times and never get it done. It was many years ago so my # might be off a little, At one time I had around 18-20 different versions cataloged.

Considering the extremely short period of time they printed them compared to the Ripken. They had to be making changes to it every few days with some done daily.

Originally Posted by Yastrzemski Sports

With the Johnson and Ripken there are several distinct variations made where the original plate was altered. That is clear.
It is important to keep in mind that cards are printed on a printing press - and it is an imperfect process. Sometimes there is too much of one color ink and too little of another. Sometimes there is ink spray. Sometimes a plate moves and the colors are out of register. There may also be human error involved. There may be bleeding, smudging, etc, etc. If you look at 100 examples of the any one card, you can find lighter, darker, blurry, crisp, yellow tint, red tint, and so on.
Johnson had a few different versions - but those are limited to the actual alterations on the plate. The others have to be classified as print defects.

Originally Posted by jacksoncoupage

I have personally seen far more variations in these cards than I had at the point of publishing that article. If you take a decent size sampling of any one of the major “types” I.E. “red box” “green tint” etc etc, you’ll find that there are several variations within each. Real variations where alterations were made to the plate as efforts to obscure the sign. Shape of the bar over the word, box size, and saturation and density of coloring/masking over sign area and on and on. These are NOT the same as color tone differences due to different ink levels and plate alignment. After 16 years of studying thousands of copies of these cards, I am very confident that there exists at least a couple dozen unique versions of this card.

The atypical manner in which Fleer edited the Marlboro sign makes tracking/cataloging these cards a challenge. As Dylan mentioned, the differences in the cards are multi-faceted. Whereas, most errors are straight forward and appear in either of two forms, the error or the corrected version. This is not the case with the Johnson Marlboros. As Adam mentioned, the process used to print these cards will lead to print defects, printing discrepancies and other human errors. After acquiring several cards we discovered several specific items that occur with the cards. We created a database to track not only the differences in the sign area, but also these print features that are common denominators . The print features are not what make the specific cards different, but they are a way to go about highlighting the changes/differences that occurred in the variations.

“The Pube” - This tiny black hair like feature is on every error card I own and I’ve never seen it on any of the final corrected versions. PSA has mislabeled the error and common cards quite frequently and by just noting if this item is in the card they can prevent this from happening.

“The Rectangle” - I’ve discussed this some, but this feature shows up on Green tints, Box with Bubble and Box versions.

“The Squiggle” - This interesting feature looks like an upside down questions mark. Card #639 Davis/Puckett has a variation with three marks that look very similar to this.

“The Grey Stain” - This feature shows up on Green tints and Box with Bubble cards.

“Recurring Print Dots” - There are tons of these recurring print dots.

There are several others, but I’ll dig into all of these more as we go. Being a completist and collecting these cards isn’t a great combination.

[jp1216]

"The Pube" is one of the more interesting aspects. Clearly dating the non-corrected or fully corrected version(s). I still think what makes this card so neat is that nobody knew about it for years! It was a VERY early correction by Fleer.
That upper rectangle - is that simply a print offset of the blue border below? Still, very nice find! Here is another close up of the 'Clear' Marlboro.

[Athos01]

I have all those checklists with positions from 1989 Fleer too. They are impossible to find. There are 7 checklists in the set, and each checklist only has player positions listed on the front of the card, and not the back.

[Athos01]

Thanks for posting that bigger pic Jon!

[Athos01]

The Johnson Marlboro versions were fixed extremely early in Fleer's print run, certainly way before the FF was caught and the crazy corrections took hold.

I've seen 1989 Fleer with print codes dating back to mid-November 1988. My guess is the clear Johnson was corrected at least partially within a day of the first official print run. I too am curious as to why another "clear" version has not shown up yet. This card is far scarcer than the 1990 Topps Thomas NNOF, and that card is always in the news.

The Treadway target was not an early error contrary to popular opinion. This card along with the checklists with positions were random short-run "errors" and were not early errors that Fleer corrected.

[Hatorade]

Thanks for sharing the image of the clear version Kevin. That is a truly special card. Would you mind sharing how many of the Johnson errors you own? Have you come across any of the blue versions? They seem to be the 2nd rarest of the error variations. I’ve attached an image of Ben’s blue card he shared earlier.

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by jp1216

"The Pube" is one of the more interesting aspects. Clearly dating the non-corrected or fully corrected version(s). I still think what makes this card so neat is that nobody knew about it for years! It was a VERY early correction by Fleer.
That upper rectangle - is that simply a print offset of the blue border below? Still, very nice find! Here is another close up of the 'Clear' Marlboro.

I really appreciate your feedback Jon. The blue line does appear to be at the same exact angle and width as the rectangle. I’m not very familiar with many of the intricacies of the printing process. Would just the portion that Andy circled show up with the offset and not the entire blue line? It looks like there is almost an area of white over spray surrounding the rectangle.