I’d be curious, do we know which companies in the late 90s intentionally made misprints, and is there evidence of that? I certainly won’t say it’s impossible. Usually when a company does this sort of thing, it’s like the Topps example from baseball I mentioned- they made an “NNOF” variant of the Draft Picks in 2015 Archives, but it’s very clear here it is a planned parallel and intentional ‘error’ (not really an error at all). Sorry to post a sports card, but to show an example:
As for 90s Fleer/Skybox marvel like the above, it’s a bit of an Occam’s razor thing for me…the simplest explanation is probably just factory mistakes that got through. I imagine QC with the huge print runs was taking random samplings and the affected error sheets could have just not been in an analyzed sample.
Without something like testimony from an ex-Fleer/printing factory employee saying they intentionally made errors, there would be no way to know for sure…but some of the reasons pointing to probably accidents would be 1)the types of errors (which tend to arise from innocent mistakes), 2)the large print runs meaning some errors probably happened, 3)I imagine a factory worker (these sets were usually contracted out to print) just wants to get the job done correctly, very possibly not interested in the cards themselves or making a rare collectible or whatever- simply in the business of printing cards. Sure it’s possible Fleer/Skybox dictated a few sheets in the run be messed up, but goes back to Occams Razor, what’s more likely and the simpler explanation.
There is something in history scholarship called the Criterion of Embarrassment (loosely- that in say an ancient text, something written that is embarrassing/negative for the author increases its chances to be true since why would they deliberately write something false that reflects badly on them). While not the same here, it’s almost an analogous situation- you’d think Fleer/Skybox (or the factory) wouldn’t want ugly misprints to get out since it reflects badly on them- embarrassing to them, so why intentionally do it. Also of note: back in the 90s when these came out, it’s possible people didn’t realize such errors would have collectible value as many are starting to realize more over the last couple decades. At the time, if people didn’t outright toss them from annoyance of getting a “messed up card” (they want a regular looking one for their set!)..or they may have held them as a curiosity and not much more. So a company at the time wouldn’t even necessarily think a misprint would end up as some big collectible thing.
Long story short, I guess we dont know for sure. But I’d lean toward the above are more than likely just accidents. An argument could be made it doesn’t make a big difference at all whether Fleer purposely did a sheet of inverted wrong foil names for 93 Masterpieces base cards, or it happened by accident. In either case, it’s an inverted wrong foil name 93MM card, which is inherently interesting, and a needle in haystack. I’m not quite sure where I stand on that- I do think it would lose the charm of being an accident, but still something that stands out and can be added to a master set. (I would contrast a solo factory worker purposely having a wrong sheet get through to a pre-planned, announced “error” set such as Topps did in 2015 Archives at least). Anyway.. interesting question to ponder!
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Marvel card collector 90s to present
