1988 topps baseball question
slimies
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I purchased an unopened complete set of 1988 topps baseball .. when i got home I decided to go through the set and pulled out a lot of card that didnt look good.. almost 30 so far along the white border have what looks like black dots and stains , streaks and some with dinged corners . so far only the scan of the some of the streaked cards have come out .. ill try the stained ones again . was that common to find cards that bad a shape back then from an unopened set?
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and a few of the stained/marked cards . out the the whole set around 35 look like these . and the ones above.
Yes, par for the course. Topps print quality was abysmal until 1992
thats just the way it was
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I have a set of 88's I obtained the same way. AFAIK, none had the streaks you are seeing but they definitely had issues. Grainy photos, chipped or rough edges, corner issues, etc. Some had some minor staining. And the centering...yikes.
I think a lot of that comes down to storage although it is hard to see how those long streaks could be anything other than printing errors. Getting bumped around in the box or stored in less-than-ideal conditions shouldn't result in that kind of issue.
You never know with factory sets.
I bought 89 upper deck factory sets and both the Griffey’s were dinged.
From what I've seen of 1980s Topps, whenever they detected a problem somewhere in the production process -- be it something gouging the cards down the front or just ink getting splotched all over the place -- they didn't go back and remove the damaged cards, they just fixed the problem and started the presses up again.
The difference between a print defect and a variation is a delicate formula involving rarity and collector's interest. If people want it (print defect occurs on an extremely important player's card) and there are enough for people to feel like they can hunt one down but not enough to allow everyone to actually get one, then it becomes a variation.
Just some added thoughts today. The more you know....
Arthur
thanks and yep most of my set looks like this ..
Looks like the cards w/o the flaws, if scarce enough, will command a premium once they become worth while grading.
Do ones without flaws even exist?
Just pulled out my factory set and got about 1/4 the way through and couldn't take anymore. Think I have a RARE off-center, washed out, print dots, out of focus, print lines, little stains variation set. Got to be worth a gazillion I tell ya. 
Jeff
Miscut Museum
My Mess
When you print an estimated 15 million copies of each card in the base set, as Topps did in the junk era, you’re bound to have some QC issues.
They made SO much of this stuff and they made it SO poorly.
You folks wouldn't believe the stories I have about 1990 Donruss. For this other stuff, I don't know what a good sample size would be but if one is reached and it shows condition sensitivity I would absolutely believe it 100%. If there's something from this era that you want in PSA 10 and someone is selling it for just normal wacky numbers I would just buy it and get it out of the way. As someone who wanted to pack-pull and self-sub, I got beaten into submission by many junk wax cards.
Luckily I got beaten into submission 3-5 years ago. I can't imagine today being like "I want to pick up all of Griffey's 1990 cards in PSA 10." You can do it but it's going to cost you a ridonkulous amount of money (relatively speaking).
Arthur
Ed Vandeberg didn’t look any better in person on the mound in 1988 for the Tribe than he looks in that pic.
Sorry. 1990 Donruss looks perfect compared to 1981 Donruss, both in collation and quality. To take a new HoFer, there are only 12 Simmons graded, and only 3 10s. Many cards have no 10s.
I opened 2 Topps '88 vendor boxes and the cards did not show any of those issues. Maybe lucky, but the 2 of each 87-88-89-90 sealed vendor boxes all had no real issues like those either. Guess I'll learn eventually - you all got me back into hobby and now wife mutters over some bills. ;P