Interesting details, Mark, thanks. Do you remember how you first heard about the error? Was it Beckett, another dealer, a vendor, a customer, or somewhere/one else? Was it common knowledge by the time you found out about it or still very "inside baseball" within the hobby at that time?
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Originally Posted by Mark17
Not saying anything was intentional. Frankly, Bonds was a highly touted rookie, the son of a Major League player, he had speed and power, was the God-son of Willie Mays, etc.
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Your recollection was that he was highly touted out the gate? I was only a 7yo back then but I don't remember Bonds having even top 10 buzz. I was in the SF Bay Area so that certainly had some effect but he wasn't even on the radar and his dad used to be a star on the SF Giants.
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Originally Posted by Mark17
A Bonds error or variation would have been far more valuable than a Johnny Ray error which is what this card apparently is, based on my and other peoples' experiences.
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This seems a lot more plausible to me than any intent by Donruss to make an error, which was a theory you floated earlier. Wouldn't it be something if the two most valuable error cards of the 80s turned out to be a case of a printing defect in the case of NNOF and a card that was really a Johnny Ray error masquerading as a Bonds error in the case of Opening Day.
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Originally Posted by Mark17
I do not recall if there was a corrected Ray card in the set that included my error. I suspect not, after reading all the posts in this thread. I know there was a corrected Bonds as he was one of the cards I was pulling on that break...Sorting that way, shuffling past the commons to the next pull card, I did not notice or care if the corrected Johnny Ray card was there or not. Same with any other common. Again, based on the comments here, the error Ray was probably in place of what should've been a corrected Ray.
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I've seen nothing yet outside of your very vivid recollection to suggest that that's what happened since @dariushou appeared to be 50/50 as to whether it was mean to be a Ray or Bonds card. That you ended up with an even 600 of correct Bonds cards definitely nudges us in the other direction, but is it possible you counted the error as one of the 600?
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Originally Posted by Mark17
What always made me wonder, though, is why there was only one in 600 sets. And I was definitely looking for it. I could see having 39 cases with none and then one case with 15 errors, or something like that, but how did just one error card set end up in that case? As has been pointed out, one would think the error, once caught, would no longer be made.
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We don't really know how Donruss collated their sets as they were placed into cases, nor do we know how they collated their cards as they were put into sets. I have wondered if we're going to hear about hot cases the way there appeared to be for the NNOF.