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1999 Finest Leading Indicators
#1

1999 Finest Leading Indicators
I"m very excited to say that I completed a recent oddball/novelty set in the 1999 Finest family.

The Leading Indicators insert set feature thermochromic ink. Basically if you used to have Transformers or Battle Beasts in the 80s you know what I'm talking about. Heat would activate the ink and reveal a new image underneath the dark thermochromic ink.

Anyways aside from the printing technique it's a fairly run of the mill set. 10 cards feature a sprinkling of QBs, RB, and WRs showing off how many yards they gained from the left, middle, or right side of the field. The 49ers and Jets doubled up on representation with Young/Rice and Testaverde/Johnson leaving 8 unique teams. The odds of pulling one aren't all that difficult, they fall juuuuust outside of 1 per box.

However what I noticed a couple months ago was rather fascinating...







Did you spot the difference? Ignore the fact that the card on the right is miscut. The protective peel! The wording "PEEL FROM CORNER TO REMOVE PROTECTIVE FILM" is printed right side up on the left and upside down on the right. I rifled through my existing collection and found that of my complete set I had 1 card that had the peel upside down. I had to have them all....

Stock images are the bane when looking for an oddity like this but fortunately comc.com scans all examples of a card and I was able to fill most of the checklist straight away. I had to message Burbank on a couple cards to see if they could determine from their stock how many upside down varieties they had.

Using my inexact scientific method of guessing plus available supply found, I think that roughly 5-10% of all Leading Indicator cards have the peel printed upside down. Burbank had I think 13 copies of a Terrell Owens and only 1 had the upside down text. I sent in a ticket with Topps customer service in long shot hopes of learning more but alas there did not seem to be anyone with institutional knowledge. I pored over the rest of my collection but no where did I find any of the wording for the peel backwards or upside down.

I suspect in the printing process that the uncut sheets were fed upside down and either no one caught it or no one cared since Topps always intended people to peel them off. Also of note is that this is the only set to have the peel wording printed at a 45 degree angle when all other base, parallel, and inserts are printed vertically (or horizontally for the Dual Refractors of Main Attractions). Perhaps due to the thermochromic ink printing they printed these cards at a different factory or outsourced it to another company. All I know is that the master collection oddballs continue to grow!

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#2

RE: 1999 Finest Leading Indicators
Interesting! And congrats on the set completion!
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#3

RE: 1999 Finest Leading Indicators
Now I am going to have to check my set and my extras when I have some time. Nice find.
Collecting John Stockton, Karl Malone, Ivan Rodriguez, Gary Carter & UF player rookie year cards.  Plus Jedd Gyorko rookie and prospect cards.
Jedd Gyorko 2010-2013: Have 329/419 including 1/1s
Wantlist: http://sites.google.com/site/sportscardsite/set-needs/
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