General Forum

I took a break for a couple years and am getting back in the swing of things. While I was gone several sets have different checklists for factory vs base sets. My cards are a combination of opened factory sets and base sets. How do I tell the difference? I never thought they'd actually have different cards between the two beyond correcting errors.

Welcome back.  The addition of Factory sets for those that have a noticeable difference between pack cards a nd the factory set is recent.  A few are easier to tell than others.  Some are listed as a parallel; others are listed as VAR to (almost) each card.  Basically, if every card differed from each other, it was built as a parallel.  But if there were some that were the same, they were listed as VAR.  Admin's decision.

A few recent ones you will encounter -

1987 Donruss: listed as VAR because the DK cards are the same in both sets.  The only difference in these is the orientation of the front to back.  This is marked for each VAR.

1988 Donruss: listed as a parallel.  This one has differences in the border color placements as well as the text on the back. Some are very easy to figure out the difference; others less so.  Right now, there is no Note 2 field added describing the difference (I think eventually we may want to add this - my opinion only).

1991 Donruss: almost all of the cards were different in the Factory set, almost.  I personally verified every card as I had a factory set intact.  The difference is in the border colors. Many images have now been added but if there is no image, compare your card to the pack card.  If it is a different border than what is pictured, then you have the factory set version.  In this set, there is a second VAR on every card - "INC" & "INC." Because some collectors are obsessed in even a period or missing period, and this site serves all collectors, this VAR was added for all of the cards.  So now this set has some 2100 or so cards listed.

This is just three of the most recent entries.  It is a lot of work to list each one (ask vrooomed) but there are more to come.

Looks like we are still missing some FS versions for 1989, 1990, and 1992 Donruss.

Welcome back!

Welcome Back

So I’m a stay at home dad and my wife took the kids to her parents’ place for the weekend to give me some me time. I thought I’d plow through some call card organizing. Then I hit the wall of 87 Donruss. Going through and moving each card to the factory variation or sorting through my multiple doubles to get the count correct was a time suck. I now know that my inventory of 1964-1985 is accurate and well-sorted. 87 Donruss I only made it halfway through before I had to pack it in. One question: is there a higher value for the factory variations or the pack cards? Many of the VAR cards didn’t have an assigned value yet.

While there may not be yet, as more people become aware, there should be (sometimes significant) price variations, especially when looking for top grades.  Using 87D as an example, most cards shouldn't have a significant premium for either version.  Higher production for wax/rack versions are balanced out by generally better protection of condition of factory sets.  The first card or two on each side of the tightly wrapped cellos inside factory sets (especially front with the black borders) are prone to corner damage and/or chipping and should carry a decent premium.

On other years where there's three or more different versions, one is usually significantly tougher and should be valued higher in equivalent condition.