1990 Topps Jeff King

[BobC]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

Agree that if it had not appeared in the Catalog briefly it would just be another recurring print defect. Disagree it was against “protocol” when it went in the Catalog. There was not then nor is there now a standard definition or “protocol” for what constitutes a variation.

With the Catalog getting huge ( before dropping post 80 listings in 2011) Bob stated in an SCD article he was narrowing his definition of a variation to an intentional change in a card by the manufacturer. He removed the King and some but not all border gaps and began restricting what new variation listings he would put in the Catalog. I would argue that given his position and standing in the hobby Bob was the “protocol” in that time period. The grading companies generally looked to him as to what to include in their master checklists

A whole different discussion or debate could be had about how it can be accurately determined in all cases if a recurring print defect was intentionally corrected or just ran it’s course.

No matter what limitation anyone personally adopts as a definition of a variation the hobby, or in some cases now PSA ( 61 Fairly ) decides, protocol or no.

And no doubt the 57 Bakep, the 58 Herrer and 52 Campos black star might not pass “protocol” today. The 52 House ?

In the end the hobby decides and value attaches based on the level of recognition. Although today with the demise of the catalogs, PSA and the registry master checklists may be the real arbiter

For myself, I generally agree a variation should be limited to cards intentionally changed by the manufacturer, realizing that is not always easy to determine. The King is an unintentional scarce print defect. I refer to recurring print defects and even non recurring defects as variants, cards that differ in some way from their common counterpart. Value I leave to the hobby.

End of rant

Actually, Bob Lemke (and the SCD catalogs) may still be seen as the "protocol". Just earlier this week I was helping a fellow member in finding a reference in one of the old SCD catalogs to forward to PSA so they would see that a 1961 Harmony Milk card he was trying to get graded by them was in fact from a known and recognized card set.

What was even more interesting was that the other member and I discussed briefly how somewhat odd it was that Bob Lemke didn't have some of the same obscure sets always listed in those vintage catalogs year after year. And then literally the very next day, someone reopens a totally unrelated, and over a decade old, thread in the post-war pre-1980 section about Dayton Daily News cards in which Bob Lemke actually posted about how he had to decide to rotate some of those obscure sets in and out of the catalogs for budgetary and other constraints imposed by Krause, the publisher. What an unbelievable coincidence.

Made me also wonder why PSA apparently doesn't already have a copy of all the old SCD catalogs to begin with. You would think that every TPG would have at least some minimal, on-site reference library or data source to be able to look up such things, right? If you are paying any TPG, who is supposedly an expert and knowledgeable about all the cards and issues they examine and grade, why should you also be doing their research work for them? I thought that is part of what they are getting paid for!