1987 Topps mysterious letter 'O' on cards

[mrknight411]

I have a 1987 Topps Shawon Dunston that has an 'o' on the O of his first name. I can't find anything online that has any mention of a card with this mysterious O. The 1987 Topps Shawon Dunston cards I see listed on eBay do not have this 'O' on his name.

Does anyone know if there's some history behind the reason why these Os appear on the wax cards? I welcome any insight or thought about this mysterious 'O'.

[goldglove2144]

First post and boy is it a doozie. It appears you have found the oft talked about but never before seen "poltergeist" Dunston variation. Speculation runs rampant, but the general consensus among members here "in the know," is that only a handful of these still exist. The rest just up and disappeared, and no one seems to know what happened to them. Now this may either be a blessing or a curse for you, depending upon how you choose to proceed from this point. Whatever you may decide, use caution, and i wish you the best of luck!

[hammertime]

Originally Posted by goldglove2144

First post and boy is it a doozie. It appears you have found the oft talked about but never before seen "poltergeist" Dunston variation. Speculation runs rampant, but the general consensus among members here "in the know," is that only a handful of these still exist. The rest just up and disappeared, and no one seems to know what happened to them. Now this may either be a blessing or a curse for you, depending upon how you choose to proceed from this point. Whatever you may decide, use caution, and i wish you the best of luck!

Shaw-OOOOOOOOOOn Dunston

[mrknight411]

Originally Posted by goldglove2144

First post and boy is it a doozie. It appears you have found the oft talked about but never before seen "poltergeist" Dunston variation. Speculation runs rampant, but the general consensus among members here "in the know," is that only a handful of these still exist. The rest just up and disappeared, and no one seems to know what happened to them. Now this may either be a blessing or a curse for you, depending upon how you choose to proceed from this point. Whatever you may decide, use caution, and i wish you the best of luck!

You got me nervous with talk about a curse! I owned this since I was a kid collecting cards. It's been in a closet for decades, until recent. I'm just glad that there is some history or knowledge about the card, because it is a piece of curiosity.

What do you mean about how I should proceed? I was more curious about what collectors know about it than anything else. If you want, please DM me to let me know exactly what you mean about how I should proceed. Thanks!

[mjohnatgt]

mrknight, welcome to blowout. The previous poster is just pulling your leg/joking with you. The card is just fine. Those are called fisheye print defects, caused by a flaw in the printing process. Usually they're one offs in various locations on the cards, but sometimes can be recurring. Here is a great thread on Net54 concerning vintage Topps recurring print defects.
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=187722

Another thread about graded card qualifiers:
https://www.smrcollectibles.com/post...-affect-a-card

PrintWiki definition
A defect of screen printing characterized by a circular bubbling of a printed ink film and a dispersion of the ink pigment therein, resulting in a nonuniformity of color resembling, as its name implies, the eye of a fish.

If you're going to be around blowout, don't be so gullible. ;-)

[WaxPax]

While I lived through this period in "Wax" history, I never heard of this variation...I still have an unopened box of 87 Topps rack packs and about 5 monster boxes to look through this weekend apparently...

[LCM1223]

A fisheye print dot. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Statistically speaking, I’d bet there’s at least one copy of every card produced in the junk era that has a fisheye somewhere on it

[hammertime]

It's pretty remarkable how many decades it took them to fix this problem (and they STILL haven't figured out how to cut cards properly).

[mrknight411]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

mrknight, welcome to blowout. The previous poster is just pulling your leg/joking with you. The card is just fine. Those are called fisheye print defects, caused by a flaw in the printing process. Usually they're one offs in various locations on the cards, but sometimes can be recurring. Here is a great thread on Net54 concerning vintage Topps recurring print defects.
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=187722

Another thread about graded card qualifiers:
https://www.smrcollectibles.com/post...-affect-a-card



If you're going to be around blowout, don't be so gullible. ;-)

If that was my initiation to the world of card collectors, then I failed with high honors!

Thank you for shedding light on the type of defect. It's pretty cool that the fisheye just so happens to be on the O of Shawon Dunston's first name. It adds a little ghost effect, which is why I believed the "poltergeist" story

[mrknight411]

Joke or not, I'm officially naming my card the "Poltergeist" Dunston variation!

[mrknight411]

Originally Posted by WaxPax

While I lived through this period in "Wax" history, I never heard of this variation...I still have an unopened box of 87 Topps rack packs and about 5 monster boxes to look through this weekend apparently...

If you find any cards with this fisheye print defect, then post it here. I'm very curious to see how it looks.