Monday, May 28, 2012

1984 Topps (Encased Variant) "Test Design"


Card Review: 4.5  I paid $9.49 for this stupid thing.  That's the most I've ever paid for a single Wallach.  Allegedly this was a "Test Design" that Topps produced.  On the final design, the players head in the lower right, protrudes from the box.  There are some zoomed in close ups below to show the difference.  It's nothing I'm going to get too excited about, but my OCD still demands I own at least one of them.

Number of this card in my collection: 1
2013 update: 2

This is copy and pasted from the ebay listing, I have no idea as to it's validity.  Frankly I think the guy sounds a little pompous and it saddened my to send him my money for this card.


An extremely rare but popular card issue produced during the 1980's is the 1984 Topps Encased Variation baseball cards.   A complete basic set of 1984 Topps Encased Variations consists of 66 different skip-numbered cards.  The 1984 Encased Variation cards are obviously DESIGN TEST ISSUES.  That is, the 84T Encased Variations are cards having designs different from the common normally printed baseball cards of that year, reflecting a testing by the card manufacturer of design features not used for the regular pack-distributed cards of that year.  In fact, all of the known 84T Encased Variations apparently originate from sheets issued or discarded by Topps and/or from individual cards cut years later from the original DESIGN TEST ISSUE SHEETS and sold through The Topps Vault.

No matter what some "experts" may proclaim otherwise, the 1984 Topps Encased Variations are DESIGN TEST ISSUE cards and NOT proof cards.  That is, the 1984 Topps Encased Variation cards with four-color process printed fronts and blank standard Topps gray stock backs are NOT proofs!  But these are DESIGN TEST ISSUE cards.

A true proof card is one that comes from a sheet created for the printer to examine for ink flow checking and for determinations of problems needing correction before the massive print run of cards is given the okay to proceed.  Such proofs often are with only one, two or three of the four process ink colors present on the front.  Another form of true proof card is called a "make-ready" proof, a card from a sheet created during the operating of the presses to get the ink colors properly flowing as a sort of "warm up" before the sheets for the normally printed cards to be marketed to the public are printed.  "Make ready" proofs often have unusual ink color densities and combinations and are typically discarded as "waste" and only very rarely ever become available to the public.  The 1984 Topps Encased Variations obviously do not qualify as proofs created for the printer to examine nor as "make ready" proofs.  Therefore, the 84T Encased Variation cards are NOT proofs:  these are cards created by the card manufacturer to see or test what a new or differently designed card style will look like — that is, as DESIGN TEST ISSUE cards.

The key design difference between the 1984 Topps Encased Variations and the common regular Topps baseball cards issued in 1984 is that on the front of an Encased Variation the head portrait of the player is COMPLETELY ENCASED within the black border forming the portrait box while in the common regular Topps card the head portrait of the player extends onto and/or above the top black border of the portrait box.  The completely encased within the portrait box feature of the 1984 Topps Encased Variations has resulted in these cards sometimes being called "Head-In-Box" cards.  Also the 1984 Topps Encased Variations are always blank-backed while the common regular Topps cards usually have printed backs.

As is detailed above, the 1984 Topps Encased Variations are clearly DESIGN TEST ISSUE cards, NOT proof cards.  However, adding to the confusion is that both Sports Collectors Digest and Beckett in their huge encyclopedic catalogs mistakenly list the 84T Encased Variations as "proofs" and not as Design Test Issues nor as variations!  In a PSA article published on the collection of major card collector Bob Fisk, these 1984 Topps are pointed out as being among the most notable and rare cards in Fisk's collection.  At least PSA correctly identified these as Encased Variations but added the mistake of also calling these "proofs"!

What does make things a bit complicated is that there are "proof" versions known for the 1984 Topps Encased Variation cards.  Proof versions of the 1984 Topps Encased Variations exist and are ultra, ultra rare — with the 84T Encased Variation proofs having only one or two of four process ink colors on the front.  The 84T Encased Variation proof cards were released to the public via The Topps Vault.  

1 comment:

  1. It is a valid thing - from what I've read there were about 130 or so different cards that got created as a test.

    The seller goes a bit overboard here with the explanation, though. I agree - what's he got an axe to grind for about proof vs test?