Re: Miscuts Explanation
Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 7:06 pm
The pics that show how multiple miscut cards fit together are not suitable for studying the card corners. This is because the photo editing software has been used to separate each card from its background for positioning, and the software makes some errors in color selection tolerance. It has trouble with the card shadow that the scanner light casts onto the background, and also because the original scans for the cards I don't own are of differing quality and had to be resized. This is particularly noticeable on the top left corner of the card with Grizzly Bear art, but on other cards also.
The straight card edges are better. Those pics are mainly for seeing the empty spaces between cards, and how the cards align with each other for analysis of the cutting.
There is not video of the opening. I think the oldest picture I have of these is time stamped 2002, though that might just be when the time stamp and watermark were added to the picture for public posting. The actual photo could be older. It's not a digital photo, but a scan of a real film photo.
I don't have my notes on this topic handy, but from what I recall of the story, the booster box was a tournament prize that was split by the top two players instead of playing a tie breaker. It was opened publicly at the event where the other attendees were watching to see whether any dual lands were opened.
Later, someone was visiting with Tom Wannerstrand, who was the WotC production manager when these were made, and they asked him for his thoughts on these cards. He speculated that they may have been die cut with a die for a different game and maybe that's why there is space between the cards.
Tom worked in Seattle, and wasn't at Carta Mundi Belgium when these were made. His speculation doesn't at all fit with what we know about the cutting process, and I suspect that his guess is inaccurate. The cards are not cut with a sheet sized die, and even if they were, there would be little reason to have big spaces between the cards as that only wastes card stock.
A more likely explanation is that the cards with spaces between them are simply from different sheets. Several sheets could have been miscut before someone noticed the error. Presumably the error was noticed and corrected at some point, but quality control didn't catch these cards while cleaning up. If anyone had seen them, then they shouldn't have been put into booster packs.
I agree that the cut on these is very strange, even stranger than what you've seen so far. Some of the cards down the left edge are sideways cut! I don't yet understand how that would be possible without hand cutting, but I'm hoping that studying how these fit together will reveal something useful. If they were hand cut in the factory, then they shouldn't have been put into booster packs.
Some more verification of the story would be nice, but I haven't fully dug into it yet.
The straight card edges are better. Those pics are mainly for seeing the empty spaces between cards, and how the cards align with each other for analysis of the cutting.
There is not video of the opening. I think the oldest picture I have of these is time stamped 2002, though that might just be when the time stamp and watermark were added to the picture for public posting. The actual photo could be older. It's not a digital photo, but a scan of a real film photo.
I don't have my notes on this topic handy, but from what I recall of the story, the booster box was a tournament prize that was split by the top two players instead of playing a tie breaker. It was opened publicly at the event where the other attendees were watching to see whether any dual lands were opened.
Later, someone was visiting with Tom Wannerstrand, who was the WotC production manager when these were made, and they asked him for his thoughts on these cards. He speculated that they may have been die cut with a die for a different game and maybe that's why there is space between the cards.
Tom worked in Seattle, and wasn't at Carta Mundi Belgium when these were made. His speculation doesn't at all fit with what we know about the cutting process, and I suspect that his guess is inaccurate. The cards are not cut with a sheet sized die, and even if they were, there would be little reason to have big spaces between the cards as that only wastes card stock.
A more likely explanation is that the cards with spaces between them are simply from different sheets. Several sheets could have been miscut before someone noticed the error. Presumably the error was noticed and corrected at some point, but quality control didn't catch these cards while cleaning up. If anyone had seen them, then they shouldn't have been put into booster packs.
I agree that the cut on these is very strange, even stranger than what you've seen so far. Some of the cards down the left edge are sideways cut! I don't yet understand how that would be possible without hand cutting, but I'm hoping that studying how these fit together will reveal something useful. If they were hand cut in the factory, then they shouldn't have been put into booster packs.
Some more verification of the story would be nice, but I haven't fully dug into it yet.