1968 Topps Mike McCormick - White Team Name

[ALR-bishop]

I collect recurring print defects as well as cards that are true variations resulting from an intentional change in the card by the manufacturer. In a great many cases I think it is impossible to ever know if a recurring print defect was a temporary defect that resolved without intervention or was remedied. And the hobby itself has clearly in the past adopted several unintentional print defects as “variations”

Mostly the way I collect it does not matter, but as an ungraded collector if I was trying to hold the line I would include in a master set any variant listed by SCD, Beckett or PSA in their master checklists, because for good or bad those cards have been adopted by the hobby as variations. If I was a graded collector I would stick with the PSA master/super lists

[deweyinthehall]

Thanks all for the observations - well, the cost of assembling a master 1968 set according to my own standards just went up a few hundred.

I tend to be VERY less stringent about condition on the variations I need than on the correct versions, so I'll probably be looking for a McCormick white letters in the G-VG range sometime soon.

[ALR-bishop]

By the way, very nice cards Bob

[toppcat]

This may not be the 100% correct description but something like White/Yellow with McCormick seems like a masking issue that was corrected.

[riggs336]

This one's not for sale but this is a good place to show it off.
I didn't realize I had this until I was going through my 1968 set a couple of years ago.
The autograph looked legit to me so I sent it to PSA. I have no idea how or when I acquired it since I put the set together in the 1990's

[deweyinthehall]

Originally Posted by toppcat

This may not be the 100% correct description but something like White/Yellow with McCormick seems like a masking issue that was corrected.

Thanks - can you explain what a "masking issue" is?

In general, the production process of Topps cards is still largely a mystery to me - some sites have offered up general descriptions of printing processes in general, but it would be helpful to understand precisely how Topps manufactured it's cards from start to finish each year in the vintage era. Are they any guides which provide this?

[toppcat]

Originally Posted by deweyinthehall

Thanks - can you explain what a "masking issue" is?

In general, the production process of Topps cards is still largely a mystery to me - some sites have offered up general descriptions of printing processes in general, but it would be helpful to understand precisely how Topps manufactured it's cards from start to finish each year in the vintage era. Are they any guides which provide this?

A mask would prevent ink from being applied on a certain color run in the offset printing process. Steve Birmingham is the go to guy for this stuff but I think in the case the yellow pass was likely impacted by an inadvertent part of the mask being left in place over the team name that was later corrected in the press run, or in second run, and allowed the team name to be properly inked in yellow once the offending portion of the mask was removed.

[steve B]

It probably is a mask issue. Which isn't exactly as described, but it's pretty close.

The mask is the plate sized negative, often a composite of several smaller ones that is used to make the plate.

For yellow letters they would have simply had the yellow print area be round. then have the blue with the team name unprinted go over that.

They probably had several team name negatives and just inserted the right ones. If they used one intended for the blue plate on the yellow plate mask, it would have unprinted areas in both for the team name, and white letters.

It's not missing yellow, if it was the team name circle would be blue.