Al, the first thought I had when I saw these dark and light variations of this Crandall card were the 71 Northrup card and the 78 Wills....IMO these two cards are examples of attempts (pathetic at best) by Topps to "fix" the print spot/mark. I have heard some indicate that the 71 Northrup smudge has varying degrees of darkness, but I have had numerous copies of either a dark or a light smudge , but none that were varying in shade or in between(just my experience though). The lack of a variance in the degrees of darkness of the spot/mark would indicate to me that someone at Topps tried to fix the defect and was not completely successful.
So, without having seen any other copies of the Crandall with varying degrees of darkness, it would be tough to say if it was a defect that faded or a poor attempt at a correction.
|