You Have to See This...

I got an email today from a collector, wanting to tell me about his latest eBay purchase. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. Here's where it gets weird:



I'll let him explain it in his own words:

I don't know how I found this auction but it was an auction for a 1991 Topps Chipper Jones graded by Beckett grading... the interesting thing about this card is that on the back of the card is a 1990 Topps football player! It is authentic and was not tampered with but I have never seen anything like this... Take a look at the photos that I have provided and I would be interested in any input you could provide....

I have collected cards for over 20 years and I have never seen this. They must have accidentally put a 1990 Topps Football Sheet with the 1991 Topps Back Sheets... Most likely since football cards were produced later in a given production year and baseball cards were produced sometimes before the year even started there may have been an overlap. So the question is was an entire sheet produced of 136 1991 Topps Cards with 1990 Topps Football Backs?

Here's what I want to know: What did the guys and gals at Beckett Grading Services think when they saw this card? Also, does a wrong back or blank front/back hurt the grade of a given card? Any answers for us, BGS?

Goudey Trade-away #18: Oglivie for Chipper

This trade comes in from David in Vero Beach, Florida.

Giving: Chipper Jones, #27
Getting: Ben Oglivie, 1973 Topps

You know, the Red Sox have never been a bad team. Sure, they've had bad stretches, but you can't call them historically bad, like you can the Chicago Cubs or the various Seattle teams.

Let's look for a moment at the stretch between their World Series appearances in 1967 and 1975. They developed raw talent into league mainstays with Carlton Fisk, Dwight Evans, Cecil Cooper, Sparky Lyle, Bill Lee, and yes, Ben Oglivie, and traded for other guys like Luis Tiant and Ray Culp and gave them room to flourish.

And while they didn't necessarily make all the right moves in terms of keeping all their good players, they had enough talent that when the front office made a change, there were guys to pick up the slack (Rice, Lynn, Hobson, Burleson, take your pick).