Thanks to the sharp eye of cincykid75 at the collector’s universe sports cards forum, there has been a lot of activity in the 1991 Topps Errors thread. Cincykid75 discovered a variation in Bert Blyleven’s card #615, a pretty major variation, actually. One version has MAJ. LEA. TOTALS in a larger font on back and another versions saw it shrunk down to match the font size of the statistics and other type on back.
This awesome find had me digging through my surplus of 1991 Topps commons and errors boxes. In the error box, I followed the logic behind the Blyleven card and looked at the bottom left corner of the back of nearly 5000 cards and was stopped dead when I noticed that Frank Tanana’s card #236 (already affected by an error) has a similar variation in the “269 with diamond” variety.
This leads me to believe that there are many more varieties on the backs of 1991 Topps cards. Though back-errors are usually less popular than front-errors, I think that the reputation the 1991 Topps set holds for variation collectors, makes it a very interesting challenge to uncover the others out there.
I sorted through almost 10,000 1991 Topps commons (or non-variation affected cards) and found a few surprises:
Mark Davidson’s card #678 can be found with the year digits in his stats “clipped” off at the left or with them fully printed. I’ve only found 2 copies of the fixed version to my 8 clipped ones.
Mickey Morandini’s card #342 can be found with a green Phillies team logo on front or with it’s correct burgundy logo. A very strange-looking variation when viewed in person.
And Rex Hudler’s card #228 seems to have originally been printed with a black line on front at lower right of the photo. It looks as though Topps made a few different attempts to airbrush and remove the offending bar, as varying degrees of it’s correction have surfaced.
I’m sure there are plenty more discoveries on their way soon. I’ll post the new stuff once it gets uncovered!
It’s always nice to see some new discoveries.
hello, I greet you from Barquisimeto – Venezuela.
I graze very interesting post about the errors is the 40th anniversary edition of the topps cards, I have a box full of cards of that edition.
I check tomorrow to see the differences and errors. If I find other errors I will comment.
greetings.
Hello! Good luck on the hunt and let us know what you find.
don mattingly card #100 showing “10” hits instead of 101 hits in 1990
These look like printing problems more than errors. Things slightly out of alignment.
Confirmed variations.
I am curious if all mistake cards have any added value? I have the box 1991 set. I have #483 Mike Aldrete with his bat out of the border, 2 Giants cards with players fingers out of the border and/or covering 40 yrs of baseball banner on top corner; I have about a dozen cards with players hands, gloves, bats, elbows, caps going outside the colored borders into the outside white. How can you find out if they are more valuable or not?
These are worthless unless there exists corrected versions with the hats/arms/bats removed. In which case, they’d probably the rarer versions.