Who spilled blue ink all over my 1976 high numbers?
 

Back in the good old days of eBay when they used to let you know who all of the other bidders are and let you talk to each other, I got to know a fellow print error collector who told me that when he mail ordered a 1976 Topps baseball set back in 1976 the set he received had around 200 of the cards with a flaw of varying degrees of blue dots on them. At first he was dissatisfied with them and thought about returning the cards, but over the years he was glad he didn't because he got into printing error cards. He showed me several scans of his and I was hooked immediately. The problem was, at that time years ago I could hardly find any of them and got frustrated and gave up. A couple of years ago a seller on eBay had a bunch of them so I got back into looking for them and they started popping up everywhere. All of them are from the last two sheets of the set from 1976, they are all cards #400 and up except for the Record Breaker cards and the team cards which Topps decided to put on the high number sheets. The ones shown are the most afflicted cards, most of them have only a few stray blue dots. There should be cards of J. R. Richard and Joe Decker with heavy blue dots but I haven't been able to find them. Not all cards on the two sheets have blue dots.

Roland Chapdelaine wrote an article back in the day about his adventures in trying to become a full time dealer and talks about how many dealers with vend cases got buried when these unusable cards appeared in their vend boxes in 1976. It was a hilarious read at the time

Rich

That's some serious ink spatter.

I have decided there is a devious side to Cliff. He uncovers these related recurring print anomalies, documents them, and for good measure will send you a few examples clearly intended to suck you into the hunt for the rest...however many there may be.

All seriousness aside, Cliff has been great at running down recurring related print defects, sharing his knowledge of them and then helping folks who are interested frun them down....well he has been a big help to me anyway

The more I look at these, the more I think it's not ink spatter. If it was and was as bad as it looks, it should extend into and across the borders.
But it doesn't.

You are right, other than the Hank Aaron RB where there a few areas of blue ink splatter in his name inside the blue box, every card with the blue dots is only affected in the photo, it never gets into the white border or the colored border area around the photo. Apparently the photos were the first phase of the process of constructing the sheets and were placed on the sheet after being splattered with the blue ink, and then the colored borders, outer white borders, player names, player positions, and team names were put on the sheet later in the sheet creation process. This flaw is recurring, and there are several more cards from the two sheets with blue ink dots, these are just the worst examples with the flaw. ETA, the two sheets with the flaw were originally printed together as one huge 264 card sheet before they were cut in half to make two 132 card sheets.

It's a puzzle.

What would have been done would be a pasteup original of the cards (Or the photos), which got photographed through color filters and a screen.
Each color for CMYK would get it's own negative, so blue spatter inside a blue area like the Aaron RB wouldn't be a surprise.

Any spatter of anything on the blue negative or the original would turn up on the plate. But spatter on the negative should turn up as white spots.

At the shop I worked for, the camera guy once shot an entire job right after both a liquid lunch and "cleaning" the camera room - which mostly stirred up dust. I got to spend a couple days in the stripping department finding spots and fixing them with some stuff like red whiteout. And that was nowhere near as bad as these cards.

I suspect some spatter in the developing of the negatives that left blank spots on the blue negative. It's pretty bad they let that through.

It's been a loooooong time since I found one of these, mainly because I haven't looked, but a Joe Decker popped up. There should be similar examples of J R Richard and Fernando Arroyo because of their placement on the sheet but I haven't been able to find either one.

These are great, the kind of odd defects I love to see.

Wow, glad these are posted...about a dozen years ago I bought a complete mint set on ebay that was advertised as coalated from vender lots. I was super impressed with the condition...set is outstanding....except the nasty blue ink on the back half! Some are insane...ive been meaning to ask here and was going to post some pics. Just cool to see there is an actual story...my plan was to replace them...

I would be glad to take the ones I need and severe ones like Knowles and Oglivie off of your hands.

I have a bunch, and several that are severe. I also have JR and Decker...here are those -

https://i.ibb.co/cFRMC0v/76-Decker.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/Ln1jKnT/76-Richards.jpg



If your willing to send me back "normal" untainted cards I will trade you straight up. Send me a list of what your looking for, I'd be glad to exchange. I'm not a big "print" defect collector so all good here. I'm the idiot that would exchange a 90 Frank Thomas no name for a regular one...haha...

My Fernando Arroyo is actually clean...only he and Tom Hall on that page are clean, rest have blue dots with Darold Knowles so bad its almost all blue...lol

https://i.ibb.co/dKFgY6J/76-Fernando.jpg

Here are the cards I have with blue ink, some light but noticeable and there, some pretty thick...and * denotes extreme...hope this list helps.

17 (Edit) Yankees Team
555 Dyar Miller
559 Clyde Wright
569 Nelson Briles
571 Don Demola
573 Bill Taveres
580 Bert Campaneris *
581 Cardinals Team
589 Rookies (all the RC's are light, but there)
590 Rookies
592 Rookies (Randolph)
594 Rookies
596 Rookies
597 Rookies
603 Jim Holt
604 Joe Lovito
605 Al Downing
609 Fred Norman *
610 Greg Luzinski
613 Tim Johnson
615 Mike Cubbage
616 Buck Martinez*
617 Darold Knowles*
618 Jack Brohamer
619 Bill Butler
620 Al Oliver
622 Rick Auerbach
623 Bob Allietta
624 Tony Taylor
625 JR Richard
626 Bob Sheldon
628 John D'Aquiston*
630 Chris Speier
636 Joe Decker
637 Bruce Bochte
638 Doyle Alexander
639 Fred Kendall
640 Bill Madlock
642 Dennis Blair
645 Darrell Porter*
649 Dave Roberts
650 Thurman Munson
651 John Odom
652 Ed Armbrister
655 Mike Vail*
656 White Sox
657 Roy Smalley
659 Ben Oglivie*
660 Dave Lopes

That’s awesome! I definitely need J R Richard and there are some I wasn’t aware of like Thurman Munson, I will need to go through what I have tonight to see who all I need.

Cliff you are correct...it's the YANKESS #17, not the Mets. Here it is -


https://i.ibb.co/vsyXPbT/76-Yankees.jpg

Here are the highlights (or lowlights :rolleyes:) of the haul I got from harliduck (John Otto), he was happy to unload them and I was happy to take them :D.

This was the first set I ordered as a 12 year-old. I ordered them from Renata Glasson virtually the whole set was spattered like this. It was the last time I ordered a set from them.

I agree, I would have been pissed if I bought a set in 1976 and 200 of the cards had a print defect of splattered blue ink dots. I was nine in 1976 and it was the first year I ever bought a pack of baseball cards from a 7-11 (or Majik Market, it's been a while) in Jacksonville FL, 1977 was my first year of full tilt collecting. Topps must not have realized it until they had already printed several hundred or even a couple of thousand of the defective 264 card sheets and decided to release them anyway rather than destroy them and have another print run of the corrected sheet. It may have been a time issue also, they might have had a deadline that they had to meet. I would say over the years the majority of these have been tossed, the worst ones like Knowles, Porter, and D'Acquisto are impossible to find now. ETA, here are better scans of the A slit and the B slit of the 264 card full sheet that was printed with the flaw, I have never seen a card affected from the first four vertical rows of the A slit.

Mike- if only you had a time machine you could go back and save all those blue dots for Cliff… and me. Wait until they catch on and the value soars in the years to come 😎. Goes to show the lack of foresight in 9 and 12 year olds

I think 71buc and harliduck would have 76 Topps Blue Dots burning parties if they had a choice :D.

Haha...I'm enjoying my new clean set...:)

As said, just really cool that I had something that two collectors I have admired for a long time were interested in. Cool deal...

Wow great thread. Those cards are trippy. I think the 76 set is underrated to put it mildly. Great design and miles better than the much ballyhooed 75 set to put it less mildly.

Those are cool looking cards. I bought a few cases of 1989 Topps DoubleHeaders and about half the Mark McGwires had red spots like that on the Rookie side. Strangely it was the only card that had the spots.

Just saw this one (literally one, as in #1) newly listed on eBay (not mine)...

Attachment 473366

Thank you! That is one of the more difficult ones to find. I finally found a nice Fernando Arroyo.

Nice Fernando Cliff!! I was bummed I didn't have that one...

Just noticed that the blue dots extend down to his name...crazy