Error card

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In a production on million cards, at some point some are printed with flaws. These are production failures, and usually do not have value at all, they are just cards whose appearance is not of the expected standard.

Cards that were printed while the press runs out of ink ain't misprints. The press cannot be easily stopped, so it's very common to run out of ink before the inks deposits can be refilled again. While quality control usually prevents this situation, can happen with some regularity, since a press needs some time to refill properly.

Cards that have chopped edges or non exact cuts ain't misprints. The cutting process it's not even related with the printing process. Happens after the printing has finished. Same as with the low ink issues, at some point the blades used to cut the cards can lose their edge or their precise positioning, resulting in badly cut cards, irregular edges or cards that were cut out of the center. These card are just defective.

A true misprint only happens when the printing plate it's messed up. In most case, the printing plate contains a mistake usually generated during the design process, before the plate itself was created. Usually the plates are supervised and discarded if necessary before the production begins. If unfortunately a mistake passes, a few cards can be printed with this error. Once the mistake it's identified, the defective plate is discarded and replaced by a new one. The control quality department immediately locates and eliminates the cards that were printed with that error before they are packed. This is what gives the misprints it's collectible value. Once the the defective plate has been destroyed, that mistake will never happen again, making the few printed cards not retired from the market valuable.

Note in any case, if the printing plate is not destroyed and substituted by a new one, the error cannot be considered as a misprint, since the company took the conscious decision to continue it's production using the same plate. Misprints are supposed to happen by a combination of accidental errors before the production starts. If the production continues while the company knows about the problem and they have taken the descision to continue, it cannot be considered as an accident or an error.

Examples of true misprints:


There's a small group of cards that originally may be considered as misprints, since they contains a true error accidentally generated before the production began, but once the mistake was informed, the company which produces the cards decided it was so insignificant that continued the production using the same plate. As a result, the entire run of this printings contains the same error, so does not counts as misprints.

Examples:


Several different printing plates are used to produce one sheet of cards. The plates are supposed to be perfectly aligned respect each other's position. From time to time, one of the plates is slightly out of alignment, producing card with their names, artwork or texts out of their original positions. These cards can be considered as a production mistakes, but not as real misprints, since the printing plates just needs to be re aligned. In extreme cases, one of the printing plates does not belongs to the same set. As a result, several sheets are printed with their names switched with other cards, sometimes of different rarity

Examples:


Cards with no text ain't misprints Examples:

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