1989 Fleer Randy Johnson #381 Marlboro Errors - 30 Years Later

[jacksoncoupage]

Originally Posted by Yastrzemski Sports

With the Johnson and Ripken there are several distinct variations made where the original plate was altered. That is clear.
It is important to keep in mind that cards are printed on a printing press - and it is an imperfect process. Sometimes there is too much of one color ink and too little of another. Sometimes there is ink spray. Sometimes a plate moves and the colors are out of register. There may also be human error involved. There may be bleeding, smudging, etc, etc. If you look at 100 examples of the any one card, you can find lighter, darker, blurry, crisp, yellow tint, red tint, and so on.
Johnson had a few different versions - but those are limited to the actual alterations on the plate. The others have to be classified as print defects.

While this is true for many scrutinized and popular variations, this is not so simple regarding the Randy Johnson changes. In fact, my blog noting 13 variations is just meant as a simplified guide to the amount of distinct “types” which there are definitely more than four of even when removing print flaw/plate shift type aberrations from the equation.

I have personally seen far more variations in these cards than I had at the point of publishing that article. If you take a decent size sampling of any one of the major “types” I.E. “red box” “green tint” etc etc, you’ll find that there are several variations within each. Real variations where alterations were made to the plate as efforts to obscure the sign. Shape of the bar over the word, box size, and saturation and density of coloring/masking over sign area and on and on. These are NOT the same as color tone differences due to different ink levels and plate alignment. After 16 years of studying thousands of copies of these cards, I am very confident that there exists at least a couple dozen unique versions of this card.

And finally, for the record, I am no longer confident that a clear version ever made its way into packs. The one and only image I’ve seen, also shown on my blog, no longer feels convincing to me that photoshop wasn’t involved. I’d like to be wrong and with this card, anything is possible but I remain skeptical.

[bnorth]

[QUOTE=jacksoncoupage;1842730]While this is true for many scrutinized and popular variations, this is not so simple regarding the Randy Johnson changes. In fact, my blog noting 13 variations is just meant as a simplified guide to the amount of distinct “types” which there are definitely more than four of even when removing print flaw/plate shift type aberrations from the equation.

I have personally seen far more variations in these cards than I had at the point of publishing that article. If you take a decent size sampling of any one of the major “types” I.E. “red box” “green tint” etc etc, you’ll find that there are several variations within each. Real variations where alterations were made to the plate as efforts to obscure the sign. Shape of the bar over the word, box size, and saturation and density of coloring/masking over sign area and on and on. These are NOT the same as color tone differences due to different ink levels and plate alignment. After 16 years of studying thousands of copies of these cards, I am very confident that there exists at least a couple dozen unique versions of this card.

And finally, for the record, I am no longer confident that a clear version ever made its way into packs. The one and only image I’ve seen, also shown on my blog, no longer feels convincing to me that photoshop wasn’t involved. I’d like to be wrong and with this card, anything is possible but I remain skeptical.[/QUOTE]

Is the supposed clear sign card pictured on you website the same one that ended up in a PSA slab. They look the same, but I can't find a pic of the PSA one right now.

I have never been comfortable with that card for a few reasons. The main one being that the only clear part of the sign is the white part. Because I know there is a real card out there I figured it was altered. If it was a real clear sign card everything would be clear. The cowboy would be easier to see and the top of the sign would be the bright red it is supposed to be.

There is another version like the one on the left but with way less red ink. I believe that version was altered to make the "clear sign" version. They look exactly the same except the white area has been cleaned up on the altered(IMHO) card.

[Hatorade]

Here is a copy of the clear version in the PSA slab that I saved from another thread. I’ve also attached a photo of the Marlboro ad from The Vet that I found.

[Athos01]

Hi guys! My name is Kevin, and I am the owner of the clear sign PSA 9 Johnson Marlboro.

I purchased this card on eBay about 10 years ago, as I've never seen a Marlboro this clear. I have been collecting cards for 30 years now, and have opened tons and tons of '89 Fleer. I am a huge Bill Ripken collector and other errors as well.

It is unfortunate that all of you believe my card is a fake. I know I sent Dylan a small pic years ago of the Marlboro sign on my card, and the pic posted by Hatorade is of my card.

I would be happy to show you the card in person at the 2019 National convention. I have no reason at all to photoshop this card.

As for the questions regarding clarity, the pic was a close-up of Randy, and he was nowhere near the OF bleachers. Additionally, it does not appear to be an extremely bright and sunny day, so the sign itself may have shadows from the sun on the red part at top and the cowboy as well.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Athos01

Hi guys! My name is Kevin, and I am the owner of the clear sign PSA 9 Johnson Marlboro.

I purchased this card on eBay about 10 years ago, as I've never seen a Marlboro this clear. I have been collecting cards for 30 years now, and have opened tons and tons of '89 Fleer. I am a huge Bill Ripken collector and other errors as well.

It is unfortunate that all of you believe my card is a fake. I know I sent Dylan a small pic years ago of the Marlboro sign on my card, and the pic posted by Hatorade is of my card.

I would be happy to show you the card in person at the 2019 National convention. I have no reason at all to photoshop this card.

As for the questions regarding clarity, the pic was a close-up of Randy, and he was nowhere near the OF bleachers. Additionally, it does not appear to be an extremely bright and sunny day, so the sign itself may have shadows from the sun on the red part at top and the cowboy as well.

Hi Keven, Thank you very much for posting on this forum. I would love to see it in hand but probably won't be at the National. I did send you a private message(PM) through this site with a request for a scan.

[bnorth]

Here is a much better pic of the PSA graded card. My bad that I did not correct Dylan when he said it could be photo shopped because I do have a long time card friend that has seen the card in hand.

I can't give a 100% opinion on the card without seeing it myself in hand or a super high resolution scan to check out the print dots(pattern). I will say there is a couple small things that make me lean more towards unaltered from the new better picture.

[bnorth]

double post

[jacksoncoupage]

Originally Posted by Athos01

Hi guys! My name is Kevin, and I am the owner of the clear sign PSA 9 Johnson Marlboro.

I purchased this card on eBay about 10 years ago, as I've never seen a Marlboro this clear. I have been collecting cards for 30 years now, and have opened tons and tons of '89 Fleer. I am a huge Bill Ripken collector and other errors as well.

It is unfortunate that all of you believe my card is a fake. I know I sent Dylan a small pic years ago of the Marlboro sign on my card, and the pic posted by Hatorade is of my card.

I would be happy to show you the card in person at the 2019 National convention. I have no reason at all to photoshop this card.

As for the questions regarding clarity, the pic was a close-up of Randy, and he was nowhere near the OF bleachers. Additionally, it does not appear to be an extremely bright and sunny day, so the sign itself may have shadows from the sun on the red part at top and the cowboy as well.

Hi Kevin,


I had forgotten the handle/email of who I’d been emailing with at the time and hadn’t heard anything in them in some time or seen another copy or even anyone with info or a pic that wasn’t your copy so figured that it wasn’t a legitimate item. Having looked at the new pic posted, I’m absolutely in the camp that it is a legitimate card and happy to know that it’s (they’re?) out there.

Hoping to see more discussion on this card and ultimately another example or two to look over. Certainly there should exist more than one. At this point, it’s lookihg to be a scarce as the Checklist w/ positions (and perhaps changed at the same time?).

[JoeDfan]

Just when I thought I was out...you guys pull me back in!!!!!!!!!!

Now I have to find this version too. Or my collection cannot be complete.

I gotta stop reading these posts!

Lol.

Sean

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by bnorth

The very slight differences will drive you crazy with these cards. I have started to catalog them several times and never get it done. It was many years ago so my # might be off a little, At one time I had around 18-20 different versions cataloged.

Considering the extremely short period of time they printed them compared to the Ripken. They had to be making changes to it every few days with some done daily.

Originally Posted by Yastrzemski Sports

With the Johnson and Ripken there are several distinct variations made where the original plate was altered. That is clear.
It is important to keep in mind that cards are printed on a printing press - and it is an imperfect process. Sometimes there is too much of one color ink and too little of another. Sometimes there is ink spray. Sometimes a plate moves and the colors are out of register. There may also be human error involved. There may be bleeding, smudging, etc, etc. If you look at 100 examples of the any one card, you can find lighter, darker, blurry, crisp, yellow tint, red tint, and so on.
Johnson had a few different versions - but those are limited to the actual alterations on the plate. The others have to be classified as print defects.

Originally Posted by jacksoncoupage

I have personally seen far more variations in these cards than I had at the point of publishing that article. If you take a decent size sampling of any one of the major “types” I.E. “red box” “green tint” etc etc, you’ll find that there are several variations within each. Real variations where alterations were made to the plate as efforts to obscure the sign. Shape of the bar over the word, box size, and saturation and density of coloring/masking over sign area and on and on. These are NOT the same as color tone differences due to different ink levels and plate alignment. After 16 years of studying thousands of copies of these cards, I am very confident that there exists at least a couple dozen unique versions of this card.

The atypical manner in which Fleer edited the Marlboro sign makes tracking/cataloging these cards a challenge. As Dylan mentioned, the differences in the cards are multi-faceted. Whereas, most errors are straight forward and appear in either of two forms, the error or the corrected version. This is not the case with the Johnson Marlboros. As Adam mentioned, the process used to print these cards will lead to print defects, printing discrepancies and other human errors. After acquiring several cards we discovered several specific items that occur with the cards. We created a database to track not only the differences in the sign area, but also these print features that are common denominators . The print features are not what make the specific cards different, but they are a way to go about highlighting the changes/differences that occurred in the variations.

“The Pube” - This tiny black hair like feature is on every error card I own and I’ve never seen it on any of the final corrected versions. PSA has mislabeled the error and common cards quite frequently and by just noting if this item is in the card they can prevent this from happening.

“The Rectangle” - I’ve discussed this some, but this feature shows up on Green tints, Box with Bubble and Box versions.

“The Squiggle” - This interesting feature looks like an upside down questions mark. Card #639 Davis/Puckett has a variation with three marks that look very similar to this.

“The Grey Stain” - This feature shows up on Green tints and Box with Bubble cards.

“Recurring Print Dots” - There are tons of these recurring print dots.

There are several others, but I’ll dig into all of these more as we go. Being a completist and collecting these cards isn’t a great combination.