Exactly agree with this. My “marbled” shell has lines and splotches. And each boot is unique in its own special way. I love it.Marbled shell is different from museum calf and regular shell colors. the specifics of how it is made is around on SF somewhere but I can't search it out right now. the way that horween produces these shells is what causes the well defined lines that you see frequently. I think that is also the case with the speckles, which I am guessing are follicles. I'm not sure. It would be an interesting Reddit AMA for Horween to do, actually.
I stand by the original view that I expressed that this is primarily an issue of customer education and expectations. To a certain extent, that's on Carmina to very publicly set those expectation. In that sense, one could pitch an argument that the customer didn't understand what they were buying. AE, for example, was better about doing this with their marbled shell rollout. Having said that, at least for Carmina, this was a really niche offering with something like 4 pairs produced or something like that. I'm not even sure that they had a good sense of what differences to expect, how to present it to customers, how to accurately set customer expectations, and how to cut and click the shell to meet customer expectations that they might not have really understood going into it.
Anyway, we're getting off on a tangent here. There are very unique aspects to marbled shell. It isn't for everyone.