1990 Topps Jeff King
 

I searched the archives but couldn't find an existing thread on this card. I'm wondering what the current consensus is as far as a theory?

I ask because I was just going through some 1990 Topps cards and decided to check the backs of them as well. I cam across a small group that had varying degrees of whiteless on the back. In some cases, the entire name had the light green coloring while in many other instances the first name had the light green while the last last name had the white.

Looking at the application splatter, I don't think the back of the Topps cards had a natural color of white or light green and that both colors were applied in different steps. Would this make sense to everyone? Am I stating the obvious that was discovered a decade ago? Am I way off?

Arthur

The King is a product of a common junk era Topps print flaw type where the applied back color bleeds through the area where it shouldn’t be or where cardboard should be visible. 1982, 1988 and 1991 have had more examples pop up than others years.

The cardboard color of the name and border design on back is the stick color. They did not print “white.” I have examples of both 1990 Topps and Traded cards where they did not print the yellow ink (and where yellow made it but blac didn’t).

When you say “light green” I’m assuming you mean the yellow/highlighter color?

Arthur-- good to see the Burger guy back. I sent you an email with a scan of my King. At one time Lemke listed it in the Big Book but later removed it. I agree it is a print defect, a very rare one

Thanks, Al!

You'll all know more about this than I will. It appears in-hand as though there was a sloppy application of a color but I don't know much about the printing process so I'm sure there's plenty of other reasons for this.

https://i.ibb.co/b7nWWS5/Group.jpg

Arthur

Good ones, Arthur

I've got more to go through as far as this source goes (a few monster boxes from other sources :(). I'll post more if I find any.

Arthur

Looking to buy one of these, please DM me or email

richtree@Gmail.com

I assume you saw the one on Ebay for $2k

Its slabbed as "authentic" which is nice but even in perfect condition I don't think you could get more than $700 for it

Dave--I posted my ungraded one above. What do you suppose authentic means without more of a description ? Authentic all yellow back ? Variation ? Altered ? Not sure what to make of that designation.

At one time Lemke listed it as a variation in the Standard Catalog, but in the last edition with post 1980 listings, 2011, editon 20, there is just a single listing for King but with the notation "correct use of white", which I guess was left in inadvertently after the second listing was removed.

Agree it is just a rare print defect, but apparently recurring and with some hobby recognition

PSA recently refused my 1990 Topps with all white backs (no yellow ink) as "manufacturer defect - do not grade" which seems funny considering the exact opposite defect gets slabbed.

Hard to believe that graders don’t get as excited about these things as we do. What are they thinking ? :)

It is weird they don't grade them and label them correctly as a printing error. I suppose with all the print errors people want to grade as some super rare error card it would quickly turn PSA into a complete shit show trying to label them correctly and having to explain to the card owner they have a common printing error and not some super rare special card. I also have some of the 90s with no yellow ink. I even have one with a blank front missing the yellow on the back.

I suppose here having it encapsulated as "authentic" would show that it is a real unaltered card. Even if PSA did not note/recognize the variation. Left to the observer to realize the no white back. But I think it helps it marketability as this card is sort of in the realm of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster - not sure that just pictures would change minds.

It is exceptionally rare but I don't think anyone is going to pay 2K for it.

Fun to see it come up though.

It is as exceptionally rare as any aesthetically pleasing fish eye or other printing flaw that follows a design pattern, aka, not a weird shape, smear, etc. It matters to a corner of the hobby because Bob Lemke went against protocol and added to the big book. Without that, it wouldn't have the Bigfoot status it does today.

I believe there is a Wathan or some other 1990 Topps yellow excess card on ebay sitting still around $200.

Agree that if it had not appeared in the Catalog briefly it would just be another recurring print defect. Disagree it was against “protocol” when it went in the Catalog. There was not then nor is there now a standard definition or “protocol” for what constitutes a variation.

With the Catalog getting huge ( before dropping post 80 listings in 2011) Bob stated in an SCD article he was narrowing his definition of a variation to an intentional change in a card by the manufacturer. He removed the King and some but not all border gaps and began restricting what new variation listings he would put in the Catalog. I would argue that given his position and standing in the hobby Bob was the “protocol” in that time period. The grading companies generally looked to him as to what to include in their master checklists

A whole different discussion or debate could be had about how it can be accurately determined in all cases if a recurring print defect was intentionally corrected or just ran it’s course.

No matter what limitation anyone personally adopts as a definition of a variation the hobby, or in some cases now PSA ( 61 Fairly ) decides, protocol or no.

And no doubt the 57 Bakep, the 58 Herrer and 52 Campos black star might not pass “protocol” today. The 52 House ?

In the end the hobby decides and value attaches based on the level of recognition. Although today with the demise of the catalogs, PSA and the registry master checklists may be the real arbiter

For myself, I generally agree a variation should be limited to cards intentionally changed by the manufacturer, realizing that is not always easy to determine. The King is an unintentional scarce print defect. I refer to recurring print defects and even non recurring defects as variants, cards that differ in some way from their common counterpart. Value I leave to the hobby.

End of rant :)

Actually, Bob Lemke (and the SCD catalogs) may still be seen as the "protocol". Just earlier this week I was helping a fellow member in finding a reference in one of the old SCD catalogs to forward to PSA so they would see that a 1961 Harmony Milk card he was trying to get graded by them was in fact from a known and recognized card set.

What was even more interesting was that the other member and I discussed briefly how somewhat odd it was that Bob Lemke didn't have some of the same obscure sets always listed in those vintage catalogs year after year. And then literally the very next day, someone reopens a totally unrelated, and over a decade old, thread in the post-war pre-1980 section about Dayton Daily News cards in which Bob Lemke actually posted about how he had to decide to rotate some of those obscure sets in and out of the catalogs for budgetary and other constraints imposed by Krause, the publisher. What an unbelievable coincidence.

Made me also wonder why PSA apparently doesn't already have a copy of all the old SCD catalogs to begin with. You would think that every TPG would have at least some minimal, on-site reference library or data source to be able to look up such things, right? If you are paying any TPG, who is supposedly an expert and knowledgeable about all the cards and issues they examine and grade, why should you also be doing their research work for them? I thought that is part of what they are getting paid for!

I'm not sure about the King, It could be a faulty plate, or a massive over inking.
The other potential culprits like a dry plate or printed from a stuck piece of paper don't seem likely for a variety of reasons.

Bakep and Herrer are probably not differences on the plate, although Herrer could be.

The Campos, is printed from a plate that was made wrong, from a faulty mask. I just don't see any way for it to be a transient printing flaw.
The plate was probably replaced or corrected quickly.

I think nearly every card has some flaw or something that could be listed, but the question becomes how trivial should something be before it's not listed.

One of the catalogs I use for another hobby deals with complex issues in a stepped fashion. First a basic set listing with major easily recognized varieties. Next is a detialed listing of color, and paper varieties followed by a listing of known relatively major plate flaws. Last, if it's needed, a reference to a different book. It's phrased nicely like "for more detials see"but could very appropriately be phrased "If you're totally insane, some other crazy person wrote a whole book about this"

Here is the 1990 Topps sheet with Jeff King. If it was a matter of a yellow ink explosion wouldn't the immediate cards surrounding King also be affected?

Steve---on the Campos, I have a black star and one of the missing front top left border versions. But I also have a partial black star, or at least one where there is only a small amount of black on the star. Not sure what that means.

Point being only that determining if a defect was intentionally corrected or just transitory is not always determinable.

I have never thought the King was intentional. Bob put it in the catalog at time before the internet and ebay demonstrated that there are thousands of print flaws like the Herrer and Bakep out there and that the definition of a variation needed to be narrowed for listing purposes.

PSA did not help the narrowing process when they recognized the 61 Fairly green smudge in the baseball on the back :rolleyes:

If they are recurring I try to collect them whatever anyone else may call them :). Always enjoy discussions like this

Al,

When I say protocal, I mean the fact that the catalog entry for this particular card was an anomaly for post 1980 sets. Even if this card were to qualify as an RPD (which I strongly doubt enough exist to warrant the label), you have to admit it is an odd inclusion when so many other recurring print defects were omitted. Bakep, Herrer and Campos had decades of devout collector interest to build that reputation and interest. As far and I understand it, just a copy or two of the King had been known to exist before its inclusion in the big book.

Virtually nobody outside of E&V circles had any clue what I was talking about whenever I mentioned that I was seeking this card and I asked A LOT of dealers for a very long time.

Not sure we really disagree on anything Dylan. Good discussion

Sorry Al, I was trying to clarify what I meant by protocol. Agreed, an interesting topic.

My feeling on Campos is that they used essentially the same mask for both red and black. and just blocked off what they didn't want. (Possibly duplicate negatives with a different sheet covering the unwanted areas. )

And here's where intent gets difficult.
Option 1, the 2 masks are perfect to start, but a bit gets torn off while instorage or making a plate, and part of the star is exposed. Or a tear gets folded over. Then the next bit of damage exposes the entire star.
Obviously no intent, and if it happened late the partial should be more common unless the defect was noticed and the plate replaced.
= No intent

Option 2, same as above, but the damage is noted, and the solution is to remove part of the mask blocking part of the star, after all, what kid will notice or care that on one card one star is black and red instead of just red?
=Intent ... sort of...

Option 3, The mask is defective right at the start. The same "fix" in option 2 is done, but isn't acceptable. The mask is repaired so it makes any further black plates properly.
=Intent.

Any of those could be what happened, or none of them.

For simplicity I'll leave the border gap out of it. There's just too many ways that can happen.

So I think we sort of agree.

Stuff like the Fairly have indeed made a mess of things.

The King is a strange one.
The common ways that happens
A sheet peels apart or misfeeds while the yellow is being done, wraps around the plate, and gets inked (Convoluted path where it peels, and wraps on the blanket then gets stuck to the plate. It seems unlikely but I've seen it happen.)

The plate either completely dries out or the water to wet it is never started. So the entire plate gets inked. (I haven't seen this, but the shop I was at was higher quality lower volume)

Both should affect more than just one card. And the wrapped paper doesn't print clearly, more of a mottled look.

What I think is a possibility is that it's a partial wrongback. Ther are some cards in the set that do not have any white area, like the turn back the clock and a couple others.
If the wrong yellow got put down, you'd get exactly what that card looks like.
And there's precedent, some 1991s the managers can be found with a 40th logo instead of the plain split background, and some player cards can be found with the split field red of a manager card.

This can happen if the back is laid out wrong, and that sort of thing did happen a few years later with one of the upper deck sets that had a group of wrong backs that were from the back and front plates not matching up.

I have a few of both of those somewhere, I just wish they were as expensive as the King.

This is a great discussion and I agree with the sentiment here regarding errors. I personally believe that errors/variations worthy of recognition from TPGs are ones that were clearly created from a distinct printing plate, and that also have hobby interest and recognition. Now I realize that this may be a sort of chicken and the egg scenario, as TPG recognition feeds hobby demand, but most of the more stark, recurring errors check both boxes (Thomas NNOF, Ripken FF, '87 Bonds Opening Day error etc)
Cards suffering from of solvent drops, fisheyes and other transient variations, though sometimes interesting, don't fit my definition of the type of thing you'd want to collect for a master set.

I have the Leyland on eBay with most of the team name in yellow. I'm sure I priced it too high but I think it's a cool card. I also have a few other player cards from 90 Topps with similar errors, but not quite as stark. Maybe I can dig some more up and scan them. I know one of them is also a manager card, and the Wathan manager card has shown that error as well. I wonder why the manager cards show up more frequently with this variation?

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...-no?authuser=0

Interestingly enough, I pulled the Leyland out of a group of 3 boxes that also had a number of blackless cards on the green sheet.

When I get some time I'll have to go digging through my 90 Topps and get some of these scanned. I found some new errors last winter that I want to bug Steve B about for his take. :)