1987 Fleer Glossy Brown backs

[insidethewrapper]

I notice that the 1st and last cards of sets at times turn brown in the boxes. Not sure what that means, didn't do well in chemistry. But I notice that a lot of my cardboard in the warehouse has faded , probably due to extreme summer and winter temperatures.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by insidethewrapper

I notice that the 1st and last cards of sets at times turn brown in the boxes. Not sure what that means, didn't do well in chemistry. But I notice that a lot of my cardboard in the warehouse has faded , probably due to extreme summer and winter temperatures.

That may be it, if the box is a really acidic one, that can transfer to the paper or cardstock next to it. It happens a pot with old envelopes that have newspaper clippings inside.

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Originally Posted by insidethewrapper

I notice that the 1st and last cards of sets at times turn brown in the boxes. Not sure what that means, didn't do well in chemistry. But I notice that a lot of my cardboard in the warehouse has faded , probably due to extreme summer and winter temperatures.

This seems like the frontrunner theory so far. I'm going to see what I can do to either reinforce this or disprove it. Thanks, Mike.

Arthur

[Troy Kirk]

Here are scans of my second brown #660 along with a second #659 card. Scans shown are 150 dpi and 600 dpi.





From looking closer at my 1987 Fleer cards, it looks like they tend to brown a little from storage on the edges. (My cards are stored in 3200 count boxes). Both the white cards and the brown #660 cards have a bit darker edges.

I don't think my #660 cards are the result of edge browning, I think they were printed brown. One of them was stored at the back of a box, but the other was stored in the middle. I think the back of Al's #1 card was probably not facing the back of his box, either.

The brown stripe on the left edge of my second #659 card is interesting. My first thought on seeing it was that it was printed next to my brown #660. That brown stripe is much more pronounced than any other minor edge browning on other cards in the boxes.

My cards were originally bought by me in 1987 and ripped open from wax packs from three unopened boxes and have been in storage ever since.

[steve B]

That's acid damage from the box breaking down.

And now I know I really need to work on a storage system so I can get my cards out of boxes...

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Damage from the box makes perfect sense. I just can't figure out why other cards not located against a box end would have it.

I've got my Glossy cards that have the brown backs and yet I've opened who knows how many Glossy Update sets and haven't found a single brown back in any of those. Finding a common thread among all of these cards is proving difficult.

Arthur

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

And assuming it's damage from the box, wouldn't it be at least somewhat different between the regular cards stored in a cardboard box and the Glossy cards stored in a metal tin?

Arthur

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

I ripped another Glossy set. I didn't find a brown back but about one third into the set I found these three cards back-to-back.



It's probably tough to tell from the scan but the Bill Doran has brown on its right edge and a little on its top edge. The front is very off-center in the opposite directions so whatever cards were to the right and above it on the sheet were clearly brown backs. Here's a better view:



So this really confuses matters. I'm not 100% ready to rule out some sort of environmental damage but the evidence is certainly pointing otherwise. The end card in this particular set, with its back against the tin, was a white back. The brown on the Doran matches up perfectly with the amount of off-centering on the front of the card. Plus, it was found well inside the set and surrounded on both sides by white backs.

Yet, why would some portions of a sheet be brown backs and other portions be white backs? That makes almost no sense. Surely there should be uniformity among sheets, right?

I can't make heads or tails of this.

Arthur