1989 Fleer Randy Johnson #381 Marlboro Errors - 30 Years Later

[Hatorade]

Steve B was kind enough to answer a few of my questions on the specifics of the printing process with these cards a few years ago. It seems that all the Johnson errors likely shared the same image on the negative for the black plates and that the common version cards were likely corrected by altering the original art for the negative used to make their black plates. The editing of the errors therefore likely took place in the negatives and plates for the three other colors. It would be great to hear more from Steve B or someone else with printing experience to discuss where/how exactly those changes happened. Would the fact that multiple versions were being produced at the same time point to the plates on each press producing their own “version”?

Originally Posted by Hatorade

Attachment 223184
PSA and BGS have a difficult time differentiating the error card from the common card in too many instances. One easy way for them to never make this mistake again is observe this small hair like object found on the bottom left of the card where the second vertical white line hits the lower blue line. I've termed the object a "short hair". The short hair is not on any of the common versions and is on every error variation I've seen. How can this same object have appeared on all the different error variations? What changed that it didn't show up on the common version?

Originally Posted by steve B

As far as how it got there it's pretty simple. Not easy to tell exactly what way but a few easy ones.
It was there when the original pasteups were photographed so it was on the negative used to produce the black plates.
or
It was a scratch on the black plate that made the errors.
or
It was a scratch on the negative used to make the black plates for the errors.
Whatever the exact reason, making any of the corrected versions meant making new plates from altered negatives, or from entirely new negatives from a corrected pasteup . And either the bit of fiber was gone from the pasteup, or the resulting negatives never got scratched.
Steve B
* It's "possible" there were transitional cards using a mix of old and new plates, but considering that removing the Ad was because of a federal law the whole set was probably redone all at once.

Originally Posted by Hatorade

Steve, thanks for the feedback. I have a very limited understanding of the process used to print the cards and very much appreciate your perspective. As I understand it, Fleer used 2 printing facilities to make the cards. Would that rule out that the scratch was on the black plate that made the errors, because there would have been more than one plate for 2 separate facilities? You mentioned that it’s possible that there are transitional cards using a mix of old and new plates and I believe that is what happened for all the cards that aren’t the final corrected version. Fleer wasn’t able to immediately cover the Marlboro sign completely and what they did was edit the cards in a way that they transitioned from the ad only being slightly obscured with tinting and still visible, to the ad being tinted so heavily that the ad is mostly unable to be seen and all these cards have the black hair. This editing was done in most part over the ad itself and at some point they changed the editing process to cover more than just the Ad, but the entire rectangular area on the upper right part of the card with a consistent blacking out that resulted in the final corrected version, and no more black hair. It seems that a similar situation occurred with the Billy Ripken errors from the set. The scribble, white out and double die edits where used by Fleer to edit the ad before they could produce the black box versions to cover the error, even though they had already begun producing the Johnson cards in their final edit form. Why couldn’t Fleer just edit out the ad more completely with their early attempts instead of having the cards slowly transition from lightly tinted to heavily tinted and why would they have so many unique attempts at covering the Marlboro sign?

Originally Posted by steve B

There would have been way more than even two plates.
That the line is on so many versions means it was most likely on the negative, so it got onto all the plates made during the transition from error to corrected. It goes away on the corrected versions? If that's always the case then the corrected ones were printed from a plate made from a new negative.
The transitional ones could have been done by altering the negatives for one or more of the other colors. Probably while they were waiting on the new negative for black to be done from altered original art.

It would be unusual for two different companies to share a negative. More likely is that one company started first. Maybe producing the cards for Wax boxes? I think those were released first with the other formats following a bit after. So company A does cards and has errors like the Johnson and maybe the Ripken that have to get fixed right away. Company B starts a bit later maybe doing the ones for cellos or vending or whatever. But they've been told about the problems and are either given corrected art to work from or do less obvious corrections. (Probably the first case)

Both companies probably ran multiple presses, and over a print run as large as 89 fleer they would have had to replace the plates a few times.

The Ripken corrections were probably a bit more of an emergency than the Johnson. Johnson ran up against a federal regulation (So did a lot of diecast cars) And the feds were probably ok with a simple "oops! we're fixing it, won't happen again" The Ripken was a bit of a thing in even mainstream media, and not the sort of PR they wanted. So they made a few different sorts of corrections. The knob area could have simply been erased from plates on the press to make the whiteout versions, the scribbles were probably scratched into the plates -also while the plates were still on the press.
The "double die" ones are just a result of bad registration. You'll find that sort of thing on lots of cards, it just got noticed on Ripken because everyone was looking at thin figures printed in multiple colors which makes them prone to that sort of "doubling".
Steve B