Just to be clear.
While this doesn't reach my fairly low bar for variations, it is something I'd class as a misprint. And I collect those as well.
So it's not a matter of whether I'd consider it collectible, but rather one of which box I'd put it in.
I suspect it's a drag mark from the bits inside the press that guide the paper into the outfeed area. Or maybe the anti-static mechanism. The guides into outfeed are often rollers on a bar they help guide the stock into the parts that align it side to side. Sometimes the rollers get stuck, or get a bit of ink on them from a jammed or misfed sheet. If it's not fixed it will affect every sheet after it happens. If it's fixed, it will only affect a few sheets. This sort of mark is pretty typical of the sheet coming out and hitting a stuck roller then essentially falling below it or bouncing off.
If anyone likes collecting it as an example of a malfunction in the printing process..........That's pretty cool. (And this is a fairly severe example, so it's noteworthy.)
That's also why I prefer the term "varieties" - it includes a wide range of differences without as much baggage as "variations" And it doesn't require us to assign intent. Many of the variations most likely happened without any intent. Like the 1963 cropping variations. They're obviously different plates, but are probably just an artifact of how manual the process was at the time. There are far fewer card pairs where Intent is obvious. Like the 79 Bump Wills, or the trade/no trade sort of things.
Steve B
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