Variation - a card that was originally designed to look one way; but the designer of the card changed something and then reprinted it. For example the text on the back of the Page/Sain cards - clearly, intentionally changed by the designer.
Print Errors - registry color shifts, miscut cards, missing colors, extra colors, etc. The thread about the opening of the 1955 Cello pack on the main board shows a print error. The Clemente has a black printing line on the lower right portion of the card. That was not intended by the designed of the card. It resulted from poor printing techniques. It is possible it has been replicated (on this card or another one), but this was not the intent of the manufacturer for the card to look this way. The pack also shows tons of miscut cards.
This leads to the Bakep/Herrer cards. These could go either way depending on when the correction was made. For example, it could be the case that the very first card from the very first print run was missing the r/a, and the manufacturer noticed this and corrected it. Or it could be that there was a goof in the printing process somewhere along the lines and this is nothing more than a recurring print error. I tend to think it is the latter - because you have so many gradual variations. But short of knowing when the card came off the line, I'm not sure you can say conclusively.
On the flip side, I think one can draw definitive conclusions about the yellow tiger. Even though there are some variations in the amount of orange, you do see that the only color that changes relates to the logo - suggesting a goof that has been corrected. And when you add this to the fact that the grey backs also have the same variation (yellow and orange exist - there is no proof that any in between exist) it is suggestive that there was a conscious change of some sort. (This also suggests that the grey back paper was mixed in a stack with the white back paper, and that the greys were not just printed once by accident - but rather resulted from someone mixing a stack of different paper into the same print run. To my mind, this totally debunks the silly notion that the 52 grey backs are Canadian issues. That only gained credence because some uneducated dealer noticed the similarity with the 54 Canadians and thought they were the same thing. The fact that you have the same error and correction on the card shows that this was all printed at the same place, at the same time).
Cheers,
Patrick
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