One of the enjoyable quirks of card collecting is the error card. Not the contrived, sleazy fake error cards that Topps has used to sully their entire brand in recent years, but genuine "Whoops, I guess I shouldn't have had that liquid lunch" errors. You may remember the Frank Thomas No Name on Front rookie, or the John Smoltz card that actually features Tom Glavine. Believe it or not, Topps still has room for those old-school oversights in this overly gimmicky day and age.
I remember pulling the base set version of the card above from my hobby box of 2008 Topps. My first thought was that it was probably the last Orioles card of Erik Bedard that I would lay my hands on, as he'd been traded to Seattle two weeks earlier. But as I looked closer, everything was not as it seemed. First of all, there's the "5", indicating that the jersey number is fifty-something. Erik has worn #45 for much of his career. More to the point, this just doesn't look like Erik Bedard. So who could it be? Let's see...lefty pitcher, number in the fifties, stupid necklace thingy. Well, the necklace thingy was a dead end, as far as my Google search. But I was still able to find a match: bingo. Erik Bedard's last Topps base card as an Oriole features a photo of Brian Burres. The error was never corrected, so there's no scarce version of the card, and no one particularly cares.
Well, almost no one.
Wow, nice spotting! It is hard to believe that with today's technology, stupid things like this still happen. You should write Topps and let them know they have morons in the composition dept.
ReplyDeleteI care! That's cool. (That you found it, not that Topps fouled up).
ReplyDeleteI just got that card today in a pack of Topps and noticed that which is why I searched to see if there was any info on it. iIn recent years I have found other error cards from Topps such as a card of Troy Glaus with the stats of Robinson Cano on the back.
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