Holy, t206 Sweeney no B version on ebay

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Posted By: runscott

Many times when I refer to a t206 card as an "error", I put the word in quotes because many collectors refer to a broad category of cards as "errors", when in actuality most are not errors, but rather printers scrap. If the "problem" is caught before the card has the back ad printed and/or is cut, I consider it to be "printers scrap". But this is all just semantics anyway - call it whatever you wish.

The main difference between the "brown/yellow" cards (they have red as well, but in a very small quantity) and the "missing red" cards is that the "brown/yellows" mistake was caught after the back was printed with the Sweet Caporal ad, but before the sheet was cut. The "missing red" cards made it through the entire production process, because I guess the problem was not as easily spotted.

The "missing red" problem is really interesting to me, because if a card has really heavy red ink, it is more appealing to the eye and might be worth a little more, and if it has none at all it is "rare". But if it has anything inbetween it is just considered "poor printing". There are plenty of examples of the Tris Speaker with very little red ink, but they don't command a premium except to a few collectors.

A card usually isn't defined as an error unless something was done erroneously and was then corrected in a subsequent production run. I personally wouldn't consider an ink trough running out as an error, or even the ink never being used as an error, but I don't have a real problem with others considering it as such. Now, if they printed a red "D" and then corrected it to a "B", that would be an error and no one could really debate it. If they printed a red "D" and left it that way for all production runs, never correcting it, it would still be an error, but no one would care or pay a premium. The "Irv Young" instead of "Cy Young" is an example, or printing Ed Reulbach's name with a "K". Like I said, though, it's all semantics.