A couple of printer scrap cards I recently picked up

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Posted By: runscott

It's true that printer's scrap cards did not end up in cigarette packs. Probably taken out of the garbage or scrap pile, hand-cut and taken home for the kids.

The card you are describing is just a bad mis-cut. "printers scrap" vs "error" can sometimes be a tough call. I'm sure there were times when either the front or the back of a sheet ended up with a severe problem, but because of laziness or deadlines the cards ended up cut and distributed anyway. What would you call these? I would say "****ty cards". If caught prior to cutting and distribution, and tossed in the scrap pile, they would be considered "printers scrap". It's really just a matter of semantics and should not be too much of a concern.

But in cases where a sheet was tossed in the scrap pile due to a problem, then used to set the presses (or whatever technical phrase you would use), resulting in sheets with multiple backs, missing colors on the front, no backs, etc., these are referred to as "printers scrap", since they were never intended for distribution. I'll give you an example - when I print my Old Judge reprint sheets, I first do a draft black & white print on normal paper. If I screw it up, I turn the sheet over and run it through again so as not to waste more paper. In some cases, if I think I can run another test on a side of the paper that has significant printing on it already, and still see results, I'll even do that. I end up with a severely garbled sheet of paper which I then throw away. I eventually run through the same process with color and photo paper, again ending up with garbled "cards" that I don't even bother cutting...scrap.

Errors are generally accepted to be cards that were distributed, but then a problem was noticed and corrected. So if you have a Dockman Matty with two "t"s in "Matthewson", it's a misspelling, but not an error, since it wasn't corrected. But if had been caught and a new card printed with the correct spelling "Mathewson", then the first card would be considered an error.

T206s that are missing a color (red "B"s are a common one) are considered errors, but in my opinion should not be. I think it was probably a case of someone simply not noticing that the red ink had run out. You see Sweenys and Speakers all the time with various amounts of red.

The "Nodgrass" is another card that is considered an error, but should not be (in my opinion). Again, you see "Snodgrass" cards with various amounts of the letter "S" showing up.

The "Magie" card is a legitimate error, since it was corrected to "Magee".