1991 Topps Baseball Forum

Not to hijack the main topic, but I recently traded with someone who sent me cards in 9 pocket pages a bit wider than usual. I can't remember who was that member, but I think that the size difference would be enough to have toploaders fitting in these wider pockets. Their size seems to have been designed on purpose and it didn't seem to be from BCW or UltraPro.

Dang. Don't got one.

But in paging through to find Whiten, I found two other error cards in the 1991 set. I already forget the players, but both had to do with wrong stats on the back. If that's your thing, make me an offer, and I'll send you the errors, since I have the proper cards. 

v3

As I keep adding more cards on. I will be going thru looking for this.. This place is so informative and fun

A little the websites that you find this error stuff is 90% of the time a printing flaw. You can tell the actual variants that are truly something to try to get here than other sites that want people to go after the rare red ink splotch card worth $4,000,000.

Does that include shipping?

Definitely not the rarest of 1991 Topps variations. Ten years ago before they started turning up almost daily, it was believed to be but there are much tougher cards to find within the master set.

Which one's would you consider more rare?  At least the front variations -- the back variations don't really matter to me that much.  I have sets that were put together out of the first run - they are labeled error/variation sets and include photocopies of early error lists that were printed in a hobby publication at the time.  They don't include the Whiten VAR, Storm Davis VAR, Oil Can Boyd VAR, or Doug Drabek VAR (and many more, I'm sure, I'm just going off the top of my head).  I believe my Whiten VAR's & Storm Davis VAR's came out of some strange combo grocery cello case that I believe included 6-8 Cello Boxes of 1990 Topps Football and 6-8 cello boxes of 1991 Topps Baseball.  Any idea where the Oil Can Boyd and Doug Drabek VAR's came from?  Were the Jose Gonzalez COR cards only in factory sets - I know I never pulled one from wax, racks, or cellos?

I have several of those old hobby articles on the set and the errors and they are terribly outdated. Even the Gilkeson book lacks a lot of into. And I am not even counting bold 40th backs, A*B* codes and glow backs when I say this. 1991 was pretty much the turning point for Beckett and SCD when it came to adjusting catalog listings for new variations. It certainly slowed down quite a bit that year and by the end of 1992 had mostly stopped beyond the very obvious stuff (think 1992 Fleer Rob Mauer/Maurer, etc).

Once I started digging through 3200 and 5000 count boxes of junk Topps stuff in search of rumored scarcities such as the 1989 Topps Tony Oliva and 1990 Topps Jeff King, I started finding a ton of new, unlisted variations and quickly came to realize that a whole lot more were to come.

Anyway, 1991 Topps had two distinct product destinations and are coded as such with these monikers: Picture Cards and Bubble Gum cards. Some variations overlap between printing in both but some can only be found in one or the other. Jose Gonzalez is found in both versions in packs and the error has also been found in some factory sets.

What 1990 Topps Jeff King ERR/VAR are you speaking of?  There is nothing listed in the database here for the 90 Topps Jeff King?  The only listed VAR for 90 Topps is the Frank Thomas no name.

The Jeff King has been listed in the SCD annual book since 2005, listed as "no white on back." A copy recently sold within the last year, which I believe was the first ever sale of one since it became known. 

This is one time where I do not believe the card should be cataloged here as it is the result of excess yellow ink on back, the very definition of print flaw. Plus, aside from two known copies, it isn't a widespread enough print flaw to qualify as recurring.

I do not believe that Bob Lemke ever spoke about it or why he included it in the book.