Good catch with your find on the variation on the variation of this card....here is another twist on this card. We all know that the YL can be found with the card number obscured on back. However, I also have a WL with the card number obscured on the back. Yet another variation on the already known variation....I have not seen the obscuration on the WL mentioned. Deans has one WL with a full and one with a partial obscuration on the back.

Seeing the same limited but recurring flaws on both the WL and YL versions begs the question, how did these flaws end on on both the WL and YL?

That could happen if the backs were printed first
Or if they printed backs on one press and fronts on another at the same time and swapped piles later.
Which sort of makes sense if they had a bunch of mistakes to fix. They'd done a bunch, stopped and while making the new plates simply went ahead and printed the backs.

There are lots of reasons to do stuff like that. There are a few cards from a number of different sets and it's hard to spot/prove where the normal order of colors wasn't followed. Some 81 fleer star stickers have the black printed before the blue on the front. Black is almost always printed last. If you have a stack, they'll be the light blue ones.

Thank you Steve, the process you describe makes sense with the print defects.....another question (may have long since been answered) revolves around why there are WL variations from this set in the first place? It does not appear that these WL cards are missing the yellow as (with the Perry card) the team's name is yellow.

Darren and Larry---I think I have all 4 now but would appreciate it if you would find any further double variation defects on less expensive cards :)

I have a yellow letter card coming to me with just a partial obscuring of the card number, so that adds yet another wrinkle to the case.

Here's an illustration of the partially obscured number mentioned above. The two cards in back are yellow lettered and the one in front is a white letter...

Attachment 293349

The general process was that they'd have a pasteup of the original art. pictures with borders etc, and that was photographed through filters to get a halftone for each color. (Some colors on some areas aren't halftones - the dot pattern like a newspaper picture)
Those negatives would be taped to an opaque piece of paper, or later, plastic. Some areas of that were cut away to expose what was intended to be printed making the "mask" which was basically a full sheet size composite negative for each color. That would then be used to make the plate.
Defects in the negatives could be fixed with a sort of red whiteout, or with red transparent tape.
All of that was done by hand.
So if the person making the mask goofed and left the name blocked off on the yellow plate the card would get a white name. After the decision to fix it, the mask could be altered to expose the name are, and new plates would be made.
The place I worked didn't have to do that in the time I worked there. We did have a few days of work when the camera guy took the pics for an entire booklet while he was under the influence of a liquid lunch and decided to clean the area just before doing the camera work. Thousands of spots from airborne dust that all had to be fixed - manually with that red whiteout.....they thought I had decent attention to detail so I got a space at a light table and a couple days working at fixing the masks.

Thank you once more Steve, your explanation as to why the YL were missing makes perfect sense

It is so maddening when someone makes sense in here, particularly if it is perfect sense :)

Sorry, I'll try to cook up some complete nonsense.......

Although it might be hard to come up with a more confusing process :D