The total craziness to be found in modern cards.
 

Some of you may have read a few of the things I've written about printing on the other forums. With modern stuff it gets even crazier.

Some of the stuff I collect.
All 3 versions of 88 score.
1990's Upper deck with diffferent holograms.
1993 especially with 3 different versions of gloss on the back
1991 Topps - light and dark logos on A+B sheets, and all cards with UV reactive ink on the back or unreactive. Or less commonly slightly reactive.

There's tons of variations in the late 90's stuff since the cards were printed at multiple locations. And each location varied in their reaction to different mistakes. And for some reason the companies actually bothered to fix them.

And it continues today
Heritage this year has two different backs.
And Gypsy queen has two different backs or cardboard -I'm still not sure which.

And the addition of extra steps like embossing, foiling, die cutting, all lead to more interesting printing errors!

I'm really glad most of it is really cheap!

Steve B

I can't imagine collecting so many different niches (pertaining to all of the different stuff you collect). I am in the middle of cutting back as I type this. Man o Man.....I don't see how you do it. I go crazy with tobacciana and pre-war type cards....I can't imagine all of the other era's thrown in too. It's mind boggling.

I collect them, I just don't do it agressively. So I'm not actively looking for big boxes full of 88 Score, but If I see one cheap I might get it if it has a few of the earlier printings. (And I'm considering $10 for a 3200 count box as almost cheap enough)

So yep, I collect it all, but I don't have a particularly impressive collection of anything. Except maybe the bicycles, that collection really ought to be in a museum. And if the US cycling HOF had come to Worcester, Ma instead of UC Berkeley it would probably be on loan. (Worcester is only about a half hour away so I could visit my stuff)

I don't do the prewar stuff agressively either. As eveidnced by my finally getting to the upper hundreds of T206s having bought my first in 1978. My wife says that If I bought nothing for a few months I could afford some of the expensive stuff I want. But I'm too busy having fun with the cheap stuff.

Steve B

1991 Topps
 

Steve---I have done the light and dark back logos....what is the reactive ink ?

I collect all Topps sets and many, if not all variations listed in the catalogs and beyond . The 1991 set has more variations, errors and oddities than any other Topps set from my standpoint

I'll bite. I know about the regular and glossy versions, what is the third version?

Well then, counting glossy it's 4:)

88 score were die cut rather than cut on a guillotine cutter.

The first print run the die cutting dies left tufts of cardboard at the corners of the first couple colors. (Groups of numbers had different colors)

Since they looked worn and there were lots of complaintsScore decided to take them back.
The second run they moved the joints in the dies to about 1/4 inch in from the corners. So the cards now had two bits of cardboard sticking out but did have nice sharp corners.
Still loys of complaints.
Finally they got it right.

So the first couple colors have 3 different sorts of corners.
The second type is actually somewhat hard to find.

Steve B

If you look at the backs with a blacklight some will glow bright orange, others won't glow at all. They seem to be roughly equal in quantity.

A few will look a very dark red. Hard to tell from the regular ones, and the light needs to have fresh batteries.

I've also found a very few where the cardboard glows slightly, and one or two that the gloss glows slightly green.

Yeah, 91 is one complicated set.
(I've also found partial wrongbacks, players with managers backgrounds and the other way around.)

Steve B

Don't forget the rash of baseball fronts/football wrong backs.