Baseball cards that predicted the future!
Baseball cards most often provide a record of the past. Flip over a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, if you're lucky enough to have one, and the back of the card tells you the Commerce Comet batted .267 with 13 home runs the year before. What you won't find, naturally enough, are any numbers from Mantle's 1956, 1957, and 1962 MVP campaigns. After all, that would be impossible, right? As it turns out, the answer is "Not so fast!" Here are five baseball cards that really did predict the future.
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1962 Jell-O Maury Wills
When the 1962 Jell-O baseball card set came out, Maury Wills had wrapped up a 1961 campaign in which he led the National League with 35 stolen bases, a far cry from the record breaking total of 104 he would pull of in the coming season. Still, check the card's number. In a stunning bit of #CardboardClairvoyance, the great minds at Jell-O (ditto Post Cereal) made the Wills card number 104 on the checklist. Were this a unique occurrence, skeptics might rightly attribute it to coincidence. However, Wills was hardly the only target of cardboard soothsaying.
1974 Topps Hank Aaron
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Twelve years later, Topps famously assigned the first card in its checklist (the first six, actually) to Hank Aaron, proclaiming him the "New All-Time Home Run King." Flip the card over, however, and the Hammer was still sitting on 713 home runs, one short of the Babe and two short of a new record. Not surprisingly, the card proved correct just a month or so after its release. While this one may feel like a gimme in the realm of home run record prognostication, some would say 1974 Topps walked so 1981 Donruss could run.
1981 Donruss Bobby Bonds
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Though many thought the Aaron home run record was unbreakable, it took only 33 years for Bonds to usurp the throne. And yes, the Bonds in question is of course Barry, but the real clairvoyance came on a 1981 Donruss card of his father, Bobby. True, Donruss had the wrong Bonds and even the wrong home run total (986 vs 762). Still, a home run record for any Bonds 26 years before it happened is some pretty impressive crystal-gazing.
1981 Topps Checklist 606-726
Topps was not one to sit by idly in 1981 as Donruss flashed its fantastic forecast, even if the Topps approach was far more subtle. In an eerie preview of Canadian heartbreak, the 1981 Topps checklist seemed to predict "Blue Monday" and the end of the Expos incredible pennant run. Just as the dream all but ended in Montreal when Expos ace Steve Rogers served up a 3-1 sinker right in Rick Monday's wheelhouse for a ninth inning home run that propelled the Dodgers into the World Series, the Topps set ended with Steve Rogers at card 725 and Rick Monday at card 726.
2008 Topps Johan Santana SP
And sometimes the prediction truly requires a tapping in to the supernatural, such as this 2008 Topps “gimmick” card of Johan Santana, which documented the first no-hitter in Mets history four years before it happened! Is it any wonder that less than a decade later Topps put out an entire set premised on prophecy?
Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.