BLACK FRIDAY COMC PICKUPS - PART 24: MISSING

BACK TO SOME SET BUILDING STUFF. BUT THIS IS A CARD FROM A SET I'VE ALREADY COMPLETED!

1974 TOPPS JESUS ALOU NO POSITION ERROR

1974 TOPPS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SETS AND THE OLDEST TOPPS SET THAT I'VE COMPLETED. BUT SETS ARE NEVER REALLY COMPLETE, THERE'S ALSO THE TRADED SET. I COMPLETED THAT ONE BEFORE THE ACTUAL SET. BUT THERE'S ALSO THE CHECKLIST INSERTS. COMPLETED THAT TOO. AHA, BUT VARIATIONS! 1974 HAS ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS VARIATION SETS OUT THERE WITH THE SAN DIEGO/WASHINGTON CARDS. THAT ONE IS NOT YET COMPLETE, BUT I'M ONLY MISSING THE MCCOVEY WHICH IS EASY ENOUGH TO FIND. HOW ABOUT ERRORS? AHA! I DIDN'T HAVE ANY ERROR CARDS! MAINLY BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW THERE EVEN WERE ANY ERROR CARDS UNTIL I STARTED LOOKING INTO THE VARIATION CARDS TO MAKE SURE I WASN'T MISSING ANY OTHER WASHINGTONS. I FIRST STARTED COLLECTING DURING A BIG ERROR CARD BOOM YOU'D THINK I WOULD HAVE SEEN THIS THING SOMEWHERE BUT NOPE. TOPPS FORGOT THE POSITION ON THE CARD AND THEN SNUCK IT BACK IN AT SOME POINT. O-PEE-CHEE WASN'T SO LUCKY, ALL THEIR JESUS ALOU CARDS HAVE NO POSITION. FROM THE MOMENT I LEARNED ABOUT THE CARD I DESPERATELY WANTED IT AND THEN FOUND IT WAS QUITE REASONABLY PRICED WHEN I CHECKED COMC

AT THE TIME I COMPLETED THE SET (WITH A JOHNNY OATES CARD I HAD ALREADY POACHED FOR MY TEAM SET IF I REMEMBERED CORRECTLY) I WAS DOWN TO JUST FIVE CARDS TO COMPLETE THE FULL MASTER SET OF 1974 TOPPS. THE ALOU ERROR, THE OTHER ERROR CARD OF BOB 'APODACO', THE MCCOVEY WASHINGTON AND THE TWO DAVE FREISLEBEN ROOKIE OUTFIELD CARDS WITH THE LARGE AND SMALL SAN DIEGO TEXT. THE APODACO I PICKED UP VERY QUICKLY ALTHOUGH I'M NOT SURE WHERE, PERHAPS A CARD SHOW. WITH THE ALOU, I'M NOW DOWN TO JUST THE THREE CARDS TO COMPLETE THE 1974 TOPPS MASTER SET. THE MCCOVEY WASHINGTON NAT'L CARD WHICH YOU CAN FIND EVERYWHERE AND IS SOMEWHAT AFFORDABLE AND THE DAMN FREISLEBEN ROOKIES WHICH ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND AND COST A LUDICROUS AMOUNT IF YOU DO TRACK ONE DOWN. AND SINCE THE FREISLEBEN IS A VARIATION ACCORDING TO MY DUMBASS COLLECTOR'S BRAIN TECHNICALLY THE SET ISN'T EVEN COMPLETE WITHOUT ONE OF THE SAN DIEGOS. ARGH WHY DO WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES. LIKE I SAID, SETS ARE NEVER REALLY COMPLETE

What I was doing last night instead of writing a decent post about baseball cards

it's the Pnuch error variation

Because, sometimes I drink. And stuff happens.

1982 Fleer Al Hrabosky

Stats on the Back sent me this card quite a while ago. I need to send something his way, but I'm having problems finding the stuff he needs. I wanted to show off this card because in 1982, the Fleer proofreaders were all hitting the weed rather heavily and there were errors galore. Yeah, I know, there were errors all over the 1981 set too, but that year they were on coke to get the set out as quickly as possible. Here's the card:

There are three different versions of this card: all with back variations.

1) The name is misspelled All Hrabosky on the back and poor All is shrunk to 5' 1"

2) The name is correct, but Al is still short

3) everything is correct!

The All version is very scarce, and the short version is harder to get than the correct version.

Which one is it???

You all can call me Al.  There's still a chance for shorty Al...

Yes! version two! Here's the whole back for the stats:

My goodness All played for a long time didn't he? I mean Al.

Yo Momma Trade of the Month

I had another post lined up for this morning, but my PC had it's daily "Dayf's in a rush, let's lock up hard" moment, so you get this trade I pulled off instead for today's reading pleasure. I guess Steve12 is just a big Larry Walker fan. I don't particularly care about any of the guys I got in return but I couldn't refuse three for one. The Topps Transmogrifier? That's another story...

This is affectionaltely known in the industry as taking a dump. This happened about three times before I finally got the trade to go through. That was a lotta work for cards I didn't care much about. They are all up for trade for just one 1989 Mark Lemke. Or 1995? I'll take 1997. Please?

2007 Topps A-Rod Mets card

I got an e-mail with a couple of card images from a reader last night asking if I've ever seen this card before. I had not. Here's what he sent:


Oh great. another A-Rod Mets error card. Is this one of those super short prints that just got lost in the flood of gimmicks last year? I'm not even sure what card set it's from. It looks like a Yankees team set of some sort but I thought the blister pack sets were only 15 cards each. I did a little Googling and found a super special Yankee box set with 55 cards in it. There's NYY20 Alex Rodriguez right there in the checklist too. I looked up the card number and found you can buy it on Amazon for $3.79.

Hey, that's not the same card! What gives? Time to do more research. Let's go to the best resource on the planet for overpriced trading cards - eBay. One search and I found one for sale. $49 bucks to get A-Rod on the Mets. Free shipping too! The fans in Queens can only dream... But this card number is NYY44. Ok, I still don't know what's going on. Back to eBay search. This time I found an entire set for the low, low price of $19.99, plus the seller was kind enough to scan whe whole thing.

NYY20 is here, top row middle card. Looks like the one on Amazon.

NYY44 is here, bottom row middle card. Aha! New York Mets! So it may be an error, but unless this dealer got lucky it's not especially rare. Since Topps states they don't do second runs to fix things like this (which is stupid, but that's a rant for another post) I'll wager that every single set has the Mets error. $49 for the card, or $19.99 for the set. Hmmmm... I believe a call of shenanigans is in order.

So that's that mystery solved, but what about the scan I was sent? It's got the wrong back. I can't tell from the scans if it's the same screw-down in both pictures. It could be the front from one card and the back from the other. Unless I had the thing in hand there's no way to tell. This whole thing could be Michael Eisner playing a trick on me in order to get me to post Topps cards on the site again. Don't laugh, the e-mail is from a guy who calls himself Mickey®. If this is Eisner screwing with me I'm gonna be ticked off. I know it ain't Keith Olbermann because he has an anti-Obama picture as his avatar. So the options are:

a) legit wrong back error card (not wrong team as that's probably a UER) worth one... MILLION dollars!
b) someone put both card NYY44 and NYY20 in a screwdown as a joke
c) Michael Eisner is messing with my mind because I refuse to finish my Series 2 box break
d) dayf has been staring at baseball cards too long and needs to go take a nap

Has anyone seen anything like this? Let me know in the comments if you have. I'm going to go have a lie down in the meantime.