1980-present variations

[steve B]

I also think the Aquino is a printing flaw caused by the black being printed lightly. Topps did that a lot, more in the early 80's and 70's. And they especially did that on the card backs.

The other possibility that's harder to figure out is if the black was printed under the blue for some reason. The 1981 Fleer star stickers come with dark and light blue, and the light blue has the colors in the wrong order.

With black you'd look for the black being solid everywhere but looking like blue or another color showing through. Or blocking it entirely which would be a lot cooler, and something I've never seen. The black is weak on a lot of places on the Aquino which is why I think it's just weak black.

Steve B

[bn2cardz]

I am not a huge junk era collector, I was just sorting through cards (mainly retrieving plastic entombing junk cards) and I came across this. I originally just kept going until I realized all the names were in black or white and I thought I had seen a blue one and went back.

When I pulled it out I originally was thinking the blue was printed on top of the black. Yet the horrible surface abrasions led me to think that what ever caused that caused the hue shift. The card getting wet and possibly diluting the black at the factory may be a good theory. I did a close up and it is noticed that the Topps logo is see through as well.




I just didn't know if this was a known variant of the set or just a stand alone flaw. I find it intersting that most flaws from the time were basically just printing flaws, some of them got recognized and categorized (Comstock Yellow and Thomas NNOF) while hundreds never did. I just didn't know for sure where this landed on that spectrum.

[steve B]

The printing process at the time was mostly manual and very hands -on. Lots of mistakes could make for different appearances, even the ones nearly everyone would call variations. Like the 79 Bump Wills , someone had to manually make the mask the plates were made from. And I'd bet the team banners were made in bulk and taped into place on the right mask. A bit of confusion, or a bit of a hurry at the end of the day and the wrong one gets put on. Most of the mistakes weren't that bad, stuff like names in white or yellow is just a matter of someone blocking out the name area on the yellow plate when they shouldn't.

Thomas NNOF is a special case, Until I read the thread about the matching cards I'd thought it was an isolated piece of stuff blocking a card, or a jam damaging the plate. But it's a plate made wrong and used when it really should have seen the scrap pile instead of the press.

Sometimes telling a print flaw apart from a difference on the plate isn't easy.

Add in some sloppiness with the inks - and for some reason they were very light on black often enough that it's fairly common - and you've got a lot of interesting cards.

The light black can be
-underinking, the layer is thinner and when it gets thin enough it isn't solid anymore.
- Disengaging the inking for black and the sheets after that get used. Not unusual on multi color presses. The offset blanket carries enough ink for a light pass or two. And if you shut down by shutting off the ink and letting a few sheets run through which makes cleaning the blanket easier or simply leaves it in a state where it's not covered in dried ink for the guy on the next shift. ....There you go.
- Actual lighter ink. The ink is sort of like grease only stickier. It's a base with color added, usually some form of carbon for a good solid black. If they used a cheap ink that had less pigment, or added a bunch of base to save a few bucks that would do it too.

Steve B