Card Sleuth: 1955 Topps Misprint

I got out of work early yesterday in anticipation of the holiday weekend, and headed over to Bay State Coin on Bromfield Street in Downtown Crossing, a shopping district of Boston. I asked to go through their box of off-condition 1956's, and found this 1955 Topps card of Joe Frazier in there for $1.



Nothing special on the front, just a lot of creases, tears, and paper-loss goodness. As you can see in the scans, the back is the real star of the card. It's my first misprint from 1955 Topps. I say 'misprint' rather than 'miscut' because only the back of the card is wrong; the front's as it should be.

On the T ride home, I got to thinking: how hard would it be to figure out the other player from just his stats? So when I got home, I pulled my Baseball Encyclopedia (1990 edition) from the shelf and scanned the 1954 season stats. And lo and behold, I found a match: New York Yankees third baseman Andy Carey.

And wouldn't you know it, Carey's stat line on his 1955 Topps card matches the one I found on the misprinted Frazier, like this:



So I imagine that during the printing process of Series 1 of 1955 Topps, Carey appeared directly above Frazier on the sheet, and at least one sheet was misprinted.


Thinking about misprints and miscuts is funny to me. For the longest time I felt that Topps should've been more careful not to let screw-ups make it out of the factory. But the more cards shows I went to, the more I realized that printing errors have been around forever, and that nobody really cared too much to catch them. I think they provide insight to the printing process, but to a little kid in the Fifties, how crappy would it have been when one card in your pack of one card was screwed up? How are you supposed to trade that?

More Miscuts

A few weeks ago, Reader Scott sent me a great big stack of blank-fronts, blank-backs, wrong-backs, misprints, and miscuts. To celebrate, I've put them with my other screwups in a binder.

The most interesting thing, besides the sheer quantity of screwups Scott sent, is that the blank-fronts he sent were broken down like so: 22 from 1989 Topps; 19 from 1990 Topps; and 14 from 1991 Topps. OK, that's a lot from each of those years. But here's where it gets crazy and leads me to put out a somewhat far-fetched conspiracy theory: the checklist numbers of the cards are grouped. For instance, here are the card numbers for the 1989 group:

237
246
681
685
686
690
691
692
694
697
702
703
716
717
718
722
723
757
783
788
789
792

So, that's like four separate checklist groups (and yes, I think it's awesome that #792 was included in the stack). And the same sort of breakdown is true for the 1990 and 1991 groups, respectively. It leads me to believe that there was at least one entire set from 1989, 1990, and 1991 (if not other years as well) printed as blank-fronts.

In other miscut news: I've been going through boxes, putting together the 1976 set (still need about 150 cards), and in the stacks of commons I've found miscut wrong-backs: Dick Drago (Wilbur Howard/Dave Parker) and Bill North (Father/Son Hegan/Father/Son Smalley).

Also, I offer no explanation on the double-prints, except to say that they may be the coolest cards I've ever seen. And yes, they're blank-backed.

Thanks Scott, you've totally made my year!

Miscuts: Hall of Fame Edition

Today I baked alive at Brimfield Flea Market in Brimfield, Massachusetts. If you've never been there, it's 17 open fields strung along Route 20, which for three weeks of each year are crammed full of leathery-skinned antiques dealers, junk collectors, hoboes, drug addicts, and certified weirdos. And a good time is had by all.

This year I went twice (July and September), each time filling up on weird stuff. July's big score was an uncut sheet of Wacky Packages from 1979. This time around I brought home a safe deposit box from an old bank, which coincidentally is the perfect size for holding baseball cards.

I also scored on miscut cards. On top of the major haul from Scott in New Jersey (more on Scott's Haul in a later post), these cards are helping make miscuts my next big 'thing.' And just my luck, all three of the miscuts I found today feature Hall of Famers.





Truthfully, the Reggie miscut is kind of lame, as it's almost impossible to determine the identity of the player on the other card. It's obvious that Jeff Newman is the other player on the Jenkins card simply because the back is cut so that his name is on there. The other player on the Carlton card (really the best card I found today) is Sudden Sam McDowell (#720). It's interesting to note that McDowell is not in the Hall of Fame, though he was 11 strikeouts away in 1967 from leading the AL in K's for six consecutive seasons (1965-1970), and he was traded practically straight-up for Gaylord Perry in 1971.

Fantastic Miscut of the Day

I've been held captive by the 1953 Topps Eddie Mathews Mystique for years. It's officially my favorite card, and I've put off buying it until I had enough money for one in near-mint condition. But then something strange happened. I began to really love miscut cards. And it turned out that there are a plethora of miscut cards from the 1953 Topps set. Needless to say I jumped on this one as soon as I found it.

Here's where it gets really great. That other card that's along the bottom? It's the lower tenth of Roy Campanella's card, who's my other favorite player from Mathews' era. I think it's interesting to note that, using this card and the one of Clem Labine I posted previously as examples, Topps seemed to line up their cards one row up, one row down on their uncut sheets. Because the design featured a black box along a portion of the bottom of each card, you'd think that this set would've had a ton of miscuts.

Fantastic Card of the Day

Because I'm on a miscut kick, today's card of the day is this version of Ike Brown's 1970 Topps card. A few other great things about the card (besides Brown sharing it 90/10 with Richie Scheinblum of the Cleveland Indians (card #161)):

• Scheinblum didn't make the Indians roster for 1970, but then went on to make the American League All-Star team in 1972 with the Kansas City Royals.

• Ike Brown's card in the Topps Baseball Cards Book is also poorly centered. Does that mean that the Topps file version of the card is also a terrible version?

• I'm beginning to find that I like cards of players where there are other players milling about in the background. Ike Brown's card has another player walking through the frame, making it seem like the Topps photographer either got to the stadium late to photograph Brown or had to squeeze him in. This theory actually makes sense, because Brown was a rookie in 1969.

• Because this version exists, there is at least one sheet of messed-up miscuts out there from the 1970 set.

A Miscut Above

I've been silent lately, but I've been thinking. Is there anything more beautiful than a miscut baseball card?

As collectors, we expect certain things from card manufacturers. One is that their design and photography departments are competent enough to create cards that we will want to collect. Another expectation is that the card-cutting machinery at their printing plants work correctly. Because without proper framing, we're just collecting cardboard rectangles.

As collectors, we bring a lot to the table in our understanding of how to read a baseball card. When a card is miscut, it's no longer a card in the most traditional sense. It lacks focus, a subject, or even proper boundaries. Our approach to reading it is thrown off.

A miscut card is cast aside as a goof with no real value. And while I won't argue the monetary value aspect, I've come to appreciate miscut cards as art, and worthy additions to my collection. And the best part? Every set ever produced has had miscut cards—it's part of the printing and cutting process—so there examples out there from almost any set you can think of. A definite boon for the miscut collector.

Give Me Your Creases, Your Misspellings, Your Dinged Corners...

It's 'Best Of' season. So to get into the spirit, I thought I'd post a little something about my favorite purchases of 2007. A few caveats before I begin. I'm not counting cards I got in the wildly popular Great Goudey Trade-away, nor I am taking into account the cards I packed into storage after moving back in September. So really, my own Best Of should be called Best Purchases September through December, 2007.

Best Card of a Wizened Old Timer/Manager:
1951 Bowman Bucky Harris
On the wall of my parents' kitchen is a panoramic photograph from the 1924 World Series, with both lineups (Washington Senators and New York Giants) assembled along the third base line. Walter Johnson is in his pitcher's warmup sweater, Bill Terry looks to be maybe all of twenty-four, there's an oompah band in the right corner getting ready to strike up, and there are a few faces blurred out from moving while the camera moved. The reason I'm mentioning this is because about halfway up the photo, in the center of the packed stands, President Coolidge is flanked by John McGraw and the young Senators player/manager Bucky Harris. Flash ahead 27 years and here's Harris back helming the Senators. Another fun thing about Bucky Harris: though the guy had nine career regular-season home runs over 12 seasons, he managed two dingers in the '24 World Series.


Worst Spelling Error Left Uncorrected:
2006-07 Upper Deck Derk Fisher [sic] I bought a pack of these cards at Target thinking they were from this year. Getting this card of Fisher more than made up for my disappointment (I was trying to determine who to draft for my fantasy basketball team, currently mired in last). Not a bad design, not memorable... I'm still trying to figure out what the defender's tattoo is; it's either one of the ThunderCats or is of Justin Bateman in Teen Wolf Too.


Best Miscut: 1953 Topps Clem Labine
I love miscut cards, the older the better. I love how it accentuates the fact that it's all about cardboard––and machines that cut cardboard––image be damned. Another fun thing: it's self-reflexive. One of the ads on the outfield wall behind Labine is for Topps Gum.


Best Use of a Nickname:
1963 Topps Choo Choo Coleman
It's almost as if the Topps copywriters bet each other they could write a whole card and never once mention a player's real name.

On an unrelated note, someone should write an essay on the effectiveness of the careers of Choo Choo Coleman and Pumpsie Green on race relations within their respective cities (New York and Boston). I know very little about Coleman, but how can a grown man command respect while being referred to as 'Choo Choo'?

As for Green, I have always considered him to be the unfortunate symbol of the deep-seated racism and segregationist beliefs of the Boston Red Sox of the 1950s, from Yawkey to Higgins. It would be interesting to read about what civil leaders and thinkers from the time thought about the teams and these two men.