Error Cards From The 80s, 90s, and 2000s
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Short print and super short print cards have become common with card products. Whether it’s Topps including short prints like the anime, spot light, and newly released Bowman crystallized, or Panini with Kabooms or and Downtowns, short prints are a staple of collecting and often some of the most desirable and valuable cards in certain products. However if you started collecting during the junk wax era, short prints didn’t exist…at least not intentionally. That’s because short prints did exist but they were error cards, cards with some type of misprint, mistake, or perhaps lewd message that were supposed to be recalled but somehow made their way into the products. This article will focus on a few of those error cards that became big chases either when they were released or over time.
Randy Johnson Fleer 1989 #381
Before he became one of the greatest pitchers of all time, Hall of Famer Randy Johnson was tall, lanky, hard throwing but oftentimes wild throwing lefty. Drafted in the second round of the 1985 MLB Draft by the Montreal Expos, Johnson eventually made his big league debut in 1988 getting his first rookie cards from every major card company, including Fleer, at the beginning of the following season. As it was the junk wax era, most of his rookie cards were overproduced thus limiting their value. However, his Fleer card numbered 381, at least one version of it, is extremely valuable. The reason has to do with the background of the photo Fleer used. Unlike the Billy Ripken Fleer card, the image in the background wasn’t lewd, just a large billboard advertising Marlboro cigarettes. Although they probably wouldn’t face any legal consequences at the time, someone at Fleer probably realized it wasn’t a good idea to have what amounted to a cigarette ad on a product designed for children.
This led to Fleer making several attempts to hide the billboard in the card. For that reason there are several variations of card 381 that exist. The most rare (only 4 are known to exist per PSA) and valuable of the variations is the one with the clear and unadjusted Marlboro sign. Other more valuable versions contain tints to the sign of different colors like green and red with the least valuable and most common being the completely blacked out version of the sign. Adding to the scarcity is that the variations were not acknowledged by Beckett until 1999 so many collectors out there might not realize that this card of the junk wax era is worth much more than they think.
Michael Wiley Collector’s Edge Supreme 1999 #199A
Unless you were a big fan of Ohio State Football or the Dallas Cowboys you might not be familiar with running back Michael Wiley. During the 1999-2000 college football seasons, Wiley was the top back for the Ohio State Buckeyes. By the time he graduated Wiley had racked up over 4,000 all purpose yards at Ohio State. He would go on to be drafted by the Cowboys in the 5th round of the 2000 NFL Draft. The error card in question for Wiley came out in 1999, the year before his rookie season with the Cowboys. That’s because at the time of the Collector’s Edge release, Wiley was deciding whether or not he would go pro and was included in the set by accident. Wiley decided to stay for his senior season but some of his cards from Supreme still made it onto the market. Those that did had two notable variations, one which contained what looked like a large pink asterisk in the center of the card and the other that was completely tinted pink. Once the error cards were discovered in 1999, the cards were pretty valuable, however over time the value has dropped as unfortunately Wiley’s professional career was cut short due to injuries.
Jacoby Ellsbury Topps Updates and Highlights 2006 UH 100
During the early 2000s Topps introduced the rookie card stamp or logo onto their products. Back then, Topps was attempting to find a way to distinguish rookie baseball cards for those players first called up to the MLB in a similar way to how football and basketball rookie cards were presented. As such, rookie stamps were and still are reserved for players that have made their MLB debuts after the product's release. Although now the stamps are ubiquitous in Topps baseball products, at the time it was rather novel, leading to a few error cards with stamps hitting the market of players that hadn’t debuted yet, or made their debuts during the season who were rushed into products.
One such card was the Jacoby Ellsbury Updates and Highlights card from 2007. After being drafted in 2005 by the Boston Red Sox, Ellsbury made his debut in June 2007. Based on the numbering of the card its seems that Ellsbury was not planned to be part of the Updates and Highlights product as another player, Reggie Abercrombie, was card 100 in the set. Also rookie cards were high numbered, being 300 or above. At the time of its release, the Ellsbury error card was once valued by Beckett at $200 as Ellsbury was one of the top prospects in baseball at the time. Currently, the card sells more modestly but at that time it was certainly a hot item for collectors.
