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

[ALR-bishop]

I am not a graded collector and have never sent a card to be graded, but I get why grading companies would not be well equipped to deal with odd ball or non standard items. Since Lemke retired and then the catalogs quit publishing there is no real viable vehicle to get variations/variants widespread hobby recognition that the grading companies can follow

I like the update Mike Cady is doing to the Gilkeson publications but it does not seem to be widely followed. And it involves the same problem of what is or should be the accepted definition of a variation in the hobby.

If you just like to collect variations, variants, recurring print defects and print oddities it does not matter much. But if your goal is increasing the value of your oddities I guess PSA or other grading company recognition of them is your only route at present.

[steve5838]

I just received the April 2023 copy of PSA Magazine and was pleasantly surprised to see a call out to #381 in an article titled "Cinderella Men". The writeup is riddled with inaccurate info (and it would have been nice if they had shown one of the versions where you can make out the sign) but nonetheless I figured others here may be interested.

[Statfreak101]

Thanks for sharing.

That picture and example is LMAO material.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by steve5838

I just received the April 2023 copy of PSA Magazine and was pleasantly surprised to see a call out to #381 in an article titled "Cinderella Men". The writeup is riddled with inaccurate info (and it would have been nice if they had shown one of the versions where you can make out the sign) but nonetheless I figured others here may be interested.

They should have borrowed a picture from you for the article. One of these days I have another card to send you.

[Hatorade]

Let’s do a little test to see if anyone here has what it takes to become a PSA card grader. I’ll post some images of graded 1989 Fleer Randy Johnson cards and ask members to identify the correct label. PSA labels the different versions of the cards Ad on Scoreboard(AOS), Ad Partially Obscured(APO) and Ad Completely Blacked Out(ACBO). Please guess which of the three labels is used for the posted cards. Are you PSA material? We’ll start with an easy one.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

Let’s do a little test to see if anyone here has what it takes to become a PSA card grader. I’ll post some images of graded 1989 Fleer Randy Johnson cards and ask members to identify the correct label. PSA labels the different versions of the cards Ad on Scoreboard(AOS), Ad Partially Obscured(APO) and Ad Completely Blacked Out(ACBO). Please guess which of the three labels is used for the posted cards. Are you PSA material? We’ll start with an easy one.

1) 1987 Topps Barry Bonds
2) 2012 Donruss Derek Jeter
3) 1910 T210 Joe Jackson
4) 1999 Fleer Tradition Wade Boggs
5) 1983 Donruss Jose Canseco

I would bet these are as close as PSA got.

EDIT: To add they are all Add Completely Blocked Out but as someone who has collected a lot of these cards PSA is about 50/50 on getting them correct.

[steve5838]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

Let’s do a little test to see if anyone here has what it takes to become a PSA card grader. I’ll post some images of graded 1989 Fleer Randy Johnson cards and ask members to identify the correct label. PSA labels the different versions of the cards Ad on Scoreboard(AOS), Ad Partially Obscured(APO) and Ad Completely Blacked Out(ACBO). Please guess which of the three labels is used for the posted cards. Are you PSA material? We’ll start with an easy one.

I also vote for the Ad Completely Blacked Out label on each of these.

[Hatorade]

Steve and Ben are both correct, but they are not PSA grader material.The cards are all examples of the common version and what should be labeled as Ad Completely Blacked Out, but instead they are labeled as all three of the different PSA versions.

[Hatorade]

Round 2, let’s try again. Are these cards Ad on Scoreboard, Ad Partially Obscured, or Ad Completely Blacked Out?