I agree with you John. The vast majority of variants it his thread are really just unintended print defects. I tend to collect any that are recurring or involve a card for which I already have other variants.

My theory is that if you look hard enough and long enough you can probably find some print variance on any card, particularly pre 80 sets.

Here is a good example of a print variant caused by a misaligned plate.....look at Dan Osinski's eyes,,,on the top card his eyes appear "normal", on the middle card his eyes appear to be looking more downward than the top card while the bottom card his eyes appear to be looking up. His eye positions appear to correlate with the shift of the image upwards or downwards. With the top card, the image is centered (equal white around the image). The middle card has the image shifted down while the bottom card has the image shifted significantly upward.

I would call that middle one 'ole crazy eyes.'

I am not exactly sure what to call this....it almost looks like a solar flare on this card.

Something far less dramatic but similar exists on a very few Tom Sturdivant cards from the same set

Always love 62T variations side by side.
RayB

Nice cards Ray, and more dignified than the 59 bird poop variant of Brandt that Bob offered in post 835

Here is another who-dun-it, kind of like the 72 McNertney, except the finger (thumb?) print is on the back instead. On the back of this 71 165 card, to the right of the Cesar's image, there is a limited but recurring print. The print also causes some smudging on Cesar's bio stats.

Cool find, will have to pick one up for my fingerprint collection.