General Forum

Should we have a parallel listing of 1987 Donruss baseball? The backs of the cards in the factory sets are oriented differently than cards taken from wax packs, giving the appearance that one version or the other is upside down when sorting from the card backs. Cards from wax packs have their numbers in the upper right corner when the card is turned over while cards from the factory sets have them in the lower left. There are no premiums or discounts for either version. It may not seem like a significant difference but it's at least on a parallel with tobacco cards that came with different backs. It doesn't look we've even acknowledged the different backs available for the tobacco issues. T206's had 16 different back variations, although I don't think each card was available with each back. I'm not sure the best way to handle a set with that many iterations, but the Donruss set is as simple as the 2 different back orientations. At a minimum, I've added this back orientation explaination to the comments for the '87 Donruss set.

Thing is, the scans independent of the front image would be the same when properly oriented in the database. I personally don't thinkitshould.  A note in the Release Notes should give the clarification of the Factory set being different than card packs.

Short answer...no.

I guess I just don't know where the release notes are. 

Until you reach a certain permission Level, a message to Admin with your suggested addition to the Release Notes.  In the meantime, you can add a Comment or Trivia entry to the set.

I found the area to add set release notes and added what I thought was appropriate notation to be reviewed at the next site update.

Maybe I need clarification on what constitutes a set or a parallel set. Or maybe I'm not sure what we're excluding from this database and why. I guess if it's not a widely recognized variation or parallel it wouldn't make the cut. But there are 2 distinct back orientations available and that should be noted somewhere for the sake of completeness. I'm surprised there isn't anything noted here about card back variations on the tobacco sets like the T206s given that's such a popular tobacco set and the 16 back variations are widely known and collected.

Very interesting article about back variations on Mark Grace cards here. http://www.markgrace.com/backvariations.html There's a whole world of subtle variations out there I never knew about. Maybe a reason to revisit some "junk wax".

What about 1988 Donruss then?  I think there's a set (factory set?) where the red and black design elements move from top right and bottom left over to top left nd bottom right.

I think the problem here is that other than the orientation, they are the same card.

Personally, I think we stretch the VAR and ERR issues much too far but some do collect ERR or VAR because of a small printing error where a black line doesn't extend all the way.

I'm at that permission level, just didn't want to overstep my bounds only to have it reversed later. Looks to me like there a lot of sets that might benefit from some additions to release notes. Especially some of the tobacco issues.

I tend to agree with you here. I guess my question is how far do you go, and what makes for a consistent way to address the differences. If it's just in the release notes for each set with subtle variations like this, that's fine. I seem to recall a lot of back and forth on 1981 Fleer baseball.