Slightly OT - 1982 Topps Blackless

[ALR-bishop]

I checked my 82 "blackless notes" and Zenithium, the seller who wrote the detailed description posted in this thread, believes there are at least 4 variations to the 396 blackless set. They are....drum roll :

365 Madlock..."Cloud" near players name on back...I have not seen it

385 Forsch--"red feature on cap"...I have seen a scan...very small red dot

664 Spillner..."underlining look" under letters of player's name...I do not even know what that means

675 Cooper...another cloud by name on back.

I decided after he told me about them that I would stick to what I had, but I think Bob wants them real bad

[JasonL]

I recently purchased a 82 Blackless Ozzie Smith, and posted a scan in the Nov pickups thread...the card has alot of dark printing marks across the bottom of the image and scattered in a few places, and it got me to wondering if this is a true blackless card? what are your opinions?
I cast no aspersions to the seller, but it seems that maybe this isn't a true blackless if it has such stray printing marks, that look black?

thoughts?

thanks,
Jason

[ALR-bishop]

Jason---it looks good to me. The normal black signature would be in the upper left and the card shows no signs of a light grey signature, which can be found on a lot of semi blackless cards ( The Morris and Stanley were hard to find with no hint grey signature). Mine has a few grey blotches/dots near the bottom like yours, but no grey streaks where the black ink lines are on the regular cards. I can sens you a color copy of mine if you want to compare

[arexcrooke]

Do these cards carry any type of premium?
nevermind, i looked and found out for myself that they do, and sometimes very large premiums

[ALR-bishop]

You will find two types of premiums on these. The ones buyers are actually willing to pay, and the one some sellers think buyers should be willing to pay. The demand and supply lines often fail to intersect

[insidethewrapper]

Is there an up-to-date error and variation book on the market ? I have one from I think the '80s.

[ALR-bishop]

I only collect Topps and Fleer baseball, and the principal sources I have used are the SCD big book and a publication by a guy named Gilkeson, that was updated through 1995. The latter covers basketball, football and baseball and has a lot of stuff not covered in the traditional catalogs ( but a lot of the listings are printing defects and errors, as well as variations).

With all the selling and scans on the internet/ebay today, there has been an explosion in listed errors, variations and print defects. But the most sought after ones are the ones that make it into the master set lists on the registry or in one of the major catalogs. I like the SCD Standard Catalog Of Baseball Cards, myself.

Doug Goodman on this board ( posted in this this thread) has a lot of expertise in this area.

[doug.goodman]

While I do like to think that I have accumulated a bit of knowledge of Topps baseball issues and their vriations. I would bet that he is among the many people who leave me in the dust when it comes to level of expertise.

I am also a fan of the SCD catalog. The Gilkeson book has variations that aren't listed in the catalog. I agree with most of Gilkeson's variations (that I have seen) but I consider a few of them to be printing errors not true variations.

I agree with Al that the 4 "variations" in the blackless set are not variations, but are glorified print dots.

I'm happy to be involved in a hobby where people can collect what they choose to collect, and because of that I choose to consider the blackless set complete at 396 cards.

Simiilarly, I do not consider the Herrera 1958 "variation" to be a variation, although if I find one cheap, I will buy it :-)

Have fun, I suppose that's the best rule to follow.

Doug