1987 Fleer Glossy Brown backs

[Exhibitman]

Topps used two different stocks in its 1977 basketball set, the normal bright white and the occasional dark.

I found a similar anomaly in 1992 Topps football:



I think they just put the occasional wrong sheet of card stock into the press.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Topps used two different stocks in its 1977 basketball set, the normal bright white and the occasional dark.

I found a similar anomaly in 1992 Topps football:



I think they just put the occasional wrong sheet of card stock into the press.

Adam, is topps printed in green/blue on the back of the darker one?

[Troy Kirk]

I had a few minutes, so I went through a box of about 1000 Fleer 1987 regular cards. I didn't find any brown ones until the last card, #660. I found another #660 and it is also brown. I don't think any of my other cards are brown. Not sure what this all means, but thought I would contribute.

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Troy, thank you. That's the first brown back that isn't located on the same sheet as all the other cards. So we know it wasn't just isolated to that one sheet.

That question has been knawing at me since this thread started so I appreciate you taking the time to check your cards and post the scan, Troy.

Arthur

[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.

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

I think they just put the occasional wrong sheet of card stock into the press.

That was my initial assumption as well. But we're talking about an extremely large amount of cards printed with this stock. Even if we assume that it's just a coincidence that the two people that have checked their sets have found one in each, three sets in total coming from three different vendors, we're talking about two entirely different print runs in the regular non-glossy Fleer that was issued in packs and factory sets and the Fleer Glossy print run that was only issued in the special factory tin sets.

The odds that this is an occasional sheet slipping in and it happening in both print runs and both Al and I getting them in all 3 sets are probably around the odds of you getting attacked by a great white shark and a grizzly bear simultaneously.

I think we need to find out if this is isolated to this one sheet or if the entire set is available. That will go a long way in determining what happened. I'm not sure how Fleer printed their '87 set. I don't know if they farmed out the job to different printers or if it was all done in-house somewhere.

It's certainly perplexing how the three sets seem to suggest a good amount of these cards were produced yet each set only contained one card.

I think at this point though, I'm going with the theory that Fleer took quantities of regular, non-glossy sheets of their cards and then applied gloss to them in order to build their Glossy tin sets. As opposed to doing a separate and unique print run. That would at least explain why the cards are found in regular and Glossy format.

The only picture I have of the sheet with Canseco/Lansford/Aguilera is very small and therefore quite blurry when I blow it up to see who else is on it. But, I'm fairly certain Puckett, Pete Rose, and Kevin Mitchell are also on the sheet if anyone has large quantities of any of those players' '87 Fleer card to check.

Arthur

[Exhibitman]

Yeah, Patrick, but that's not it; the cards I used to illustrate are regular and gold trimmed. The latter is on the same stock as the regular issue but has a gold Topps water mark. Every regular I went through was standard white stock except the Elway.

[Exhibitman]

Arthur: Another hypothesis is that the cards just got roached somehow.

[Gary Dunaier]

Is it possible that the brown backs are a result of a different quality cardstock, or some impurity in the cardstock, that wasn't noticed at the time? And that the brown backs weren't brown backs at the time, but have become so over time due to any such impurities?

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Adam & Gary, that's definitely in play and makes sense. My only thought would be that we would see varying degrees of brown, no? The backs are just about identical to each other and yet they have been stored in different conditions for the past 40 years -- Al's in a cardboard box and mine in a metal box that was wrapped in cellophane.

That may not have anything to do it with though. It may just be a matter of time, no matter what the conditions are. It's probably the most logical theory so far though, considering no one has noticed them until now. I think it has to be that the cards were printed on a stock that wasn't treated or had a different trait that would allow them to brown over time, not that the cards were from a smoker's home. If it were an outside agent then more than one card would have been affected.

Arthur

[Exhibitman]

I agree. Good thing we resolved that!

[88horsepower]

Just last week I opened a box of 1987 Leaf Baseball and noticed a similar issue with several cards. Some of the card backs are white backs and some almost appear to be missing a dark hue. I'll post some pictures later, but both variations were found of the same card in the same box. Very strange.