There’s not a right or wrong to this. I’m just giving my perspective.
Ninetales error only occurred in theme decks which tells me it was a production error in the PCD sheet. Most likely a group of ninetales were being produced and one on the sheet was missing its damage counter. Meaning about 1 out of every 30 shadowless deck were produced until the error was corrected pushing the number far lower. It’s a fun piece for me to say something about the card.
On the other hand minor printing changes like ink got spilled here causes a red dot, there’s a card that’s sheet wasn’t put on the tray correctly causing the off center cut, minor color variants, just don’t do it for me.
Theme decks, at least under WOTC, were manufactured on their own sheets. (2) sixty card decks and a blank filler card run in an 11 x 11 sheet. It made it easy for cutting and correlation. Typically smaller runs, often run first, or second after starter decks. Production would be geared to optimize one type of product at a time. So the Ninetails error was just in the early run(s) of theme decks.
Following up on my earlier post, below are some comparisons using images taken by the same scanner. No editing.
In person the really vivid ones jump out. I ordered them as follows: yellow border, orange border, high saturation.
Differences in stamps, errors and so on are cool but eye appeal is a huge factor in other markets and I’m glad there’s such variance with the Shadowless/1st Edition set in particular. As I said before, it adds to the chase. I’ve noticed variation in other sets too but they usually aren’t as extreme and my theory is they got it all dialed in with later sets.
Here’s a mash up of three yellows, three oranges, and three high saturation Charizards for further illustration.
This is cool. What is considered “best” eye appeal? Personally, I think the more saturated ones look better, but the yellow/orange boarder does not make much of a difference for me. Higher saturation is also something I generally associate with 1st edition/shadowless base. The paler cards above almost look like unlimited versions at a quick glance.
Sure would be interesting if one variant comes from long crimp guaranteed shadowless packs, and one variant comes from short crimp shadowless chance packs.
