Friday, September 21, 2012

OPC/Topps Blank Back - OG Style

 Well a little while back I had a few moments to flip through some of my random mystery boxes and I found something I didn't even know existed.

Anyone collecting OPC in the last few years knows UD makes a blank back version of the base cards and makes them rather rare to pull, but what I didn't really know was that blank backs had been around long before that. Here is an example.
Front side, seems normal enough, condition is excellent-ish

Back side.....blank as my mind some days
So are these rare, are these done on purpose? Those are questions I don't have the answer to. I know that blank backs in modern cards are done on purpose to try and give those PC collectors more chase cards, but  was the purpose back in 1979 when these cards were made? Or was this card an error or misprint.

If you look on eBay, you will see many blank back cards from the 50's-present day and those seem much more plentiful that I could have ever imagined. Personally, I never pulled one of these from back in the day or in present-day products.

The questions I have are:

Are blank backs from the 90's and previous rare?
Were they made on purpose or are they an accident?
Are they valuable in any way?

3 comments:

  1. I don't know for sure, but I'd say "fairly rare" and "accident". The late 1970's didn't have the "hit" mentality we have today, and the cards were still largely aimed at kids at the time, so I have to think that this was just a Quality Assurance failure on OPC's part, and not anything intentional.

    For a collector a card like this would've either been considered to be a curiosity or an annoyance.

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  2. Old school Blankies seem to be somewhat rare but I'm pretty sure they weren't intentional. Just like the extremely mis-cut cards of the late 70s or early 80s.

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  3. Thanks for your responses guys. I figured that was the story behind them, and kinda neat to know they are rare mistakes....much more fun that a severely miscut card like my 2-98% off centre cut Dave Taylor rookie!

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