1996 Collector's Edge Advantage Football Forum

There are two sets listed in the DB for Crystal Cuts: one is SN/5000 and a Crystal Cuts Silver version is SN/3100.

As you can see from the photo of this card I have, the blue field where the SN is supposed to be is blank.

What do you think, error or variation?

Neither; a printing glitch.  It missed the step where the SNs are printed on the card.

A lot of cards were back door when Coll Edge went under.  Plus when the inventory was sold by bankrupt court.   They got out that way also.   I have a few and seen a lot more of them for sale.  I knew a guy that worked for Coll Edge at the end.   He has/had a lot of John Elway cards that never was sold normally.   

From him :  When they printed the cards in sheets most of the time there was more cards printed then what the SNs was needed.  So for this card there may have had 3500 cards printed but only 3100 was needed for  SNed. 

This appear to be with all the manufacturers not just Coll Edge. As you see them on E-bay and other sites all the time.    2002 Pacific is an other  one that I see a lot of.

He told me a lot of stuff.  Do I believe him on all of it.  Who knows  

Same thing happened at Star in the late 80s/early 90s. We printed more than needed (although we didn't serial number the cards, just the sets).

Additionally, the promo cards were actually on the same sheets as the sets, so they were printed in the exact same quantities as the sets, but only 1 promo card per 5 sets were released (so less than 20% of what was printed was released because we printed extra of the sets as well). The blank-backed promos were left to lay around the office to be used as notepads. The ones with glossy coatings and/or the Ad Cards (with a lot of printing on the reverse) were simply destroyed (usually ripped in half by hand) leaving a handful in the "archives" for potential replacement, if needed, along with the extra base set cards. I'm pretty sure most card companies did this (or something similar).

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.

I guess theoretically it could have been pulled from a pack, in which case, to me, it would be more of an error, but the unused stock explanation you mentioned seems most plausible. I got it out of a commons box, so I'll never know.

There are unnumbered versions on COMC too.

The Release Notes for that set have been updated to note unnumbered aftermarket versions are available. Since the expected version is serial numbered, we can't list the unnumbered ones in the database.