Finally found an e98 printing variation - Black and White e98s.....

[shammus]

Thought these were kind of neat. e98s, in my opinion, always seemed to be a pretty "clean" set and not one that produced a lot of printing goofs (like e90-3 for instance). Previously, the only e98 variations I was really aware of were the Old Put overprints, which are almost never found and if so, only on a couple players.

There were quite a few of these black and white cards on Ebay a few weeks back and I'm surprised no one mentioned them here. I picked up six of the cards I saw up for auction. Most of these are completely void of any color at all. One or two look like they might have a slight pinkish hue to the card though.

A couple things I noticed with these....

The cards, despite being lowgrade, are NOT faded at all. The photos are still sharp and compare to the e97 black and whites in terms of quality. This makes me believe that the cards weren't simply left out in the sun for too long. If you notice the finer details such as the color of the players' skin and gloves, you'll see that on the normal cards, there are flesh toned colors for the skin and brown used for the gloves. But on B&Ws, everything is just a slate grey color. I think the McLean is a really solid example of this. A card that has faded wouldn't simply turn grey, rather everything would appear really washed out and lighter, yet still have some color. Also, check out the captions at the bottom. The caption on the black and whites are just as sharp as the ones on the colored cards, another reason I don't believe the colors simply just faded away.

Seeing as how several of these also have been placed in numerical holders, I don't believe there was any chemical-altering or any other funny business going on. It really seems as though the cards missed most of, if not all their color passes.

Backs on these are normal...they aren't blank backs or anything like that. The print is just like those on the normal cards.

Any thoughts? Have any of you seen e98s like these before? I seem to remember a Cobb or perhaps a Matty coming up for auction a while back that was of the black and white variety. That might have been an e93 though...


e98-001.jpg

e982.jpg

[sb1]

Appear to be hand cut printers scrap. Possible the first color pass was in error(probably the Orange) and they pulled the sheet and one of the employees took it home and cut them up for his kids.

[Tim Kindler]

These E98s do bring up an interesting debate. Fortunately, I was able to pick up a few of the ones that I needed from the seller, but passed on these because I thought they were just faded (The Chase to me really rings out faded). But maybe I'm wrong and you may have found yourself quite a unique find. If you are correct in that they just missed the printing process or some other circumstance then you have some great cards on your hands! I hope that they are not because getting one of each card in the four different colors is proving to be an extreme challenge in itself and if I have to get black and white ones now I'll never get there Anyway, neat cards to look at and debate about. I guess I'm basing my arguement on the Chase and the Mack which to me look like they have color to them but are just faded. But adding to your side of the arguement is that EVERY Mcgraw with a GREEN Background, the pink skin tone color IS MISSING. At least every McGraw with a green background that I've ever seen is missing the pink color ON HIS FACE, so you may be right about your theory. Either way, nice pick up on your E98s! Any E98 is a Great card!

[shammus]

Hey Tim -

HAHA....I don't think that printing anomalies should add to the e98 checklist. Errors don't count, you'll still have to get the 4 background colors, however I believe that only INTENDED variations get added to the checklist. Not printing goofs and other error cards.

I agree, the Chase is seemingly pinkish in color but most of the others are completely without any sort of color. A couple reasons why I don't think these are faded...

- the photo quality is similar to e97 B&Ws. There is a lot of detail with these and the photos still look reasonably sharp. Faded cards are blurry and well....faded and much lighter than these are. If hypothetically speaking, the cards were say, left out in the sun and faded to the point where they lost all their color, wouldn't it be safe to say that they wouldn't still be as dark as these cards are?

- the captions are every bit as dark as e98s with color. If the cards had faded out, these would be lighter too.

- faded cards would still have some color...just lighter to a degree. With these cards, everything from the background, to the color on the face is a dull slate grey. Cards that are faded, wouldn't just simply turn grey in color.

I believe I used to own that green McGraw you showed. Kind of interesting that those seemingly missed the "flesh-colored" color pass...heh

Scott's argument is a feasible one I think. It seems that these cards might have been some sort of a "test run" that either saw no color passes or maybe just one, which would explain the Chase. The cards were then pulled and thrown in the discard pile where they were rescued, perhaps, and taken home.

[rdixon1208]

They don't look like faded cards to me. Very cool.

[Leon]

I am in the missing-a-color-pass camp. That and the fact they could have been some kind of testing of the inks, and then they didn't like the outcome so quit producing them theory, seems very plausible. I saw them on ebay and meant to go after one for my type set but spaced it. I agree with Brian on his points for them not to be faded. Neat cards.....and drats