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1998 Fleer Sports Illustrated First Edition Duplicates?

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petMonster

Member
Jan 20, 2012
549
6
Hey all,

Forgive me if this has been talked about on here before, but I'm trying to find out information about the 1998 Fleer Sports Illustrated First Edition's ("The Only 1 of 1 First Edition"). I know some of you have seen dupes of these cards before (@Yanks2151 posted a link to a dupe Bernie Williams a while back) and I've seen two Barry Bonds's posted on eBay at the same time before. There are currently two Andruw Jones's on eBay right now:

Here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1998-FLEER-...T-EDITION-MASTERPIECE-1-1-RARE-/112073736801?

And here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ANDRUW-JONE...d=112073736801&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

Does anybody know if these are counterfeits or possibly some sort of printing sample that made its way into the market? If counterfeited, I figure the easiest way to do that would be to take the base card and add the Extra Edition stamp to the front and the "1 of 1" stamp on the back. If that was the case, I would expect to see some subtle mismatched details, but the "dupes" I've compared (granted, I've only compared through pics, not in real life) seem to be dead ringers to each other.

Any information you all could provide would be greatly appreciated.
 

death2redemptions

New member
Feb 4, 2016
12,488
0
The Carolina on the Southern side
If you look at the print on the back of the card it appears like the Fleer 1998 logo (along with every thing else) are much closer to the bottom edge of j-man's version. But these are pictures so it may just be an optical illusion based on how the card is placed.
 

petMonster

Member
Jan 20, 2012
549
6
If you look at the print on the back of the card it appears like the Fleer 1998 logo (along with every thing else) are much closer to the bottom edge of j-man's version. But these are pictures so it may just be an optical illusion based on how the card is placed.

I completely agree with you, but the stamps (front AND back) on both cards line up exactly the same way relative to the background details in the photos (see below). I'm far from implying that Fleer printed more than one sheet of these, but I'm just brainstorming here...

Do companies usually stamp/serial# entire sheets during the production phase and THEN cut the sheets, or vice versa? And does that affect the preciseness of the alignment of the stamps/serial#'s relative to the background images on the cards?

Also, what is the cutting process? Do their cutters have adjustable feed settings, and if so, if days go by and settings were adjusted between cuts, could that result in two of the same sheets having a much different cut? I've seen so many cards that are cut a bit too far to one side or the other that I can't imagine they use a very precise machine to cut the sheets.

With all that said, the fact that the stamps/numbering on each of these cards is so precisely located relative to the image has me wondering if Fleer printed multiple sheets and perhaps they were cut at different times, resulting in the "offness" of the cuts. The story is that this parallel was a last minute addition to the production process, so maybe they printed a quality control sheet or an 2nd sheet in case the first sheet was damaged while being cut or inserted into packs? And if that 2nd sheet got set aside for so many days or weeks or thrown out and then someone decided to grab it, cut it, and take them home, then perhaps there are two of each of these floating around out there?

Lastly, the Travis Lee (#201) was a super last minute addition to the set and is said to be 3 times more scarce than the rest of the set, so if the Travis Lee was added AFTER Fleer printed the First Edition cards, then maybe they had to print one more sheet of the First Editions with the Travis Lee added? In which case there could be two of every card #1-200, and only one Travis Lee?

Like I said, just brainstorming. For all I know this "mystery" has been solved and I'm just waiting for someone to bring me up to speed.

JMan Front Detail.jpg HotCorner Front Detail.jpg
JMan Back Detail.jpg HotCorner Back Detail.jpg
 

petMonster

Member
Jan 20, 2012
549
6
Ok, so this thread didn't really get much feedback, but I wanted to ask one more question...a complete hypothetical.

What if I had both of these Andruw Jones's and submitted one to BGS and one to PSA at the same time. Would they both get slabbed? Aside from seeing both cards together at the same time (hence submitting them to different companies at the same time), I'm not sure there's any way to tell these apart.
 

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