This is a collection of printing and cutting errors. The process of making cards has always been a complex one with many opportunities for mistakes along the way.
Date(s): June 25, 2005. Album by Adam Warshaw. 1 - 51 of 51 Total. 17541 Visits.
1 T201 Ed Walsh miscut. Note that his glove is cut off on the left and showing on the right and Walsh appears to be looking at the glove. Between the glove and the player you can see the line where the cut was supposed to be made. The back of this card is miscut too. Since they were full bleed cards minor miscuts on T201 are common; one this bad is not.
2 T205 William Bergen. Top to bottom miscuts this severe or worse are rare as they were obvious and likely to be thrown out during quality control or by the disappointed kid who got them.
3 T205 Arnold Hauser. Side to side miscut. The "acid test" for me for a miscut versus off-center is whether the cut is severe enough to bleed into the image itself, preferably showing the card next door too.
4 T220 Joe Coburn/Joe Gans. Where do I begin? The card has the wrong back and it is upside down, almost certainly because the sheet was run through the press facing the wrong way. The borders are hand cut and not very well. I assume that this was printers scrap that made it out the back door of the factory.
5 T205 Scott misprint. Kinda makes your eyes water, doesn't it? You can learn a lot from a "good" misprint. On this card you can see that the black ink was the last ink applied before the gold colored borders were added. T205 used real metal in the borders, so they had to be last applied; the inks would not stick to the metallic borders.
6 On this card, the gold border application ended early.
7 T206 misprint. This Jack Barry card was misaligned when printed, resulting in the offset image. Again, a question of degree. Really bad offsets are rare; mild offsets resulting in a blurry image are not.
8 T206 Easterly. Another drunken register.
9 T207 Byrne. Misprinted and miscut side to side. Man, the printer had a bad day that day; too much to drink the night before?
10 T212 Obak Ostdiek miscut. The Obak sets (there are 3) depict players in the Pacific Coast League. For some reason relating to technique the images on these cards are extraordinarly clear and rich. This is the only Obak miscut severe enough to show the next card over that I've ever seen.
11 T205 Ed Konetchy reverse. Miscut top to bottom.
12 E76 American Caramel Jack O'Brien miscut back. The front of the card is fine.
13 T206 Beck. Nice miscut; you can just see the next image at the bottom.
14 T212 Obak Moser back ghost. One of the nicest Obak ghosts I've seen. One of my favorite error card categories, ghosts are highly prized by error collectors, particularly T206 ghosts. When the cards were printed the sheets were stacked. Occasionally a wet sheet was placed on top or below another sheet and the image transferred. Here, the wet ink on the sheet beneath this one had not yet dried when this sheet was put on top of it, resulting in a "ghost" image on the card back.
15 T212 Obak miscut and upside down back. Another wrong way sheet insertion.
16 One of the more frequently encountered forms of T206 miscut is a card with the player's name at the top instead of the bottom. The degree of miscut varies, from no name at the bottom to two names showing. This Mullin card is of the latter variety.
17 T206 Barbeau. I haven't been able to figure out what the ghost is; definitely a card back in red. I suspect that the sheet was accidentally run through the press after the front printing and not caught.
18 T206 Titis. Miscut back and missing red ink on the front.
19 This T206 Hoblitzell is missing the final layer of red ink. The team name should be bright red and his skin is decidedly jaundiced.
20 1928 Exhibit Virgil Barnes. I've not seen a back ghost as nice as this one in an Exhibit card before.
21 1948 Leaf Warren Spahn rookie card with ghost back. Note the reversed "B" on the hat; the image mirrors that of the stacked sheet below.
22 Here is the Spahn front.
23 1948 Leaf Johnny Vandermeer with front ghost. The wet sheet was stacked on top of the sheet with this card, transferring the back image to the front.
24 W516 misprints. I don't think I need to explain what is wrong with these strip cards.
25 V61 Neilsen's Edd Roush. This is one of the best back ghosts I've ever seen in a candy card.
26 Here is the front of the Roush card.
27 1955 Topps Eddie Stanky Miscut
28 1968 Tony Perez Miscut. Gotta love a HOFer error.
29 How about this 1968 Clemente? Need 3-D glasses to look at it.
30 Similar to Clemente, off register.
31 T224/T229 Pet Cigarettes Jack Johnson. Card from this West Coast set of 2 brands (Pet and Kopec) are extremely scarce; T229 Kopec is one of the rarest T cards, with only a few examples having come to market over the last several years. This Jack Johnson (the key to the set) has a nice front ghost and a wrong back. I suspect that it was in fact put out by the manufacturer and torn later by some kid.
32 Back of the Johnson with wrong bio, printed upside down and off-center.
33 T229 Pet Cigarettes Jim Flynn. Nice ghost image floating above him.
34 T218 Joe Jeannette front ghost. Look at the edges closely.
35 T218 Jim Jeffries fighting pose. Jeffries was heavyweight champion for several years and is highly collectible.
36 Here is the back of the card with a wet sheet ghost showing his arm and fist at the Hassan label.
37 Decalco Litho Co. Jack Dempsey. Another strip card error from the 1920s. Missed by a mile.
38 1948 Leaf Ceferino Garcia. Miscut and misprint. Leaf's quality control was abysmal and falls into 4 main categories: (1) Offcentered cards and blurry cards from slight print misalignments are common, (2) Cards missing the back printing are rare, (3) reversed sheet cards (where the front was printed on an upside down sheet, resulting in backs that don't match the fronts) also are known but rare, and (4) missing ink cards are very rare. This Garcia is missing the blue ink.
39 Here is what the Garcia is supposed to look like.
40 1948 Leaf Jake La Motta with no red ink.
41 1948 Leaf Jake La Motta normal printing.
42 1948 Leaf Gene Tunney with no red ink.
43 1948 Leaf Gene Tunney normal printing. "GENE TUNNEY IN PERSON FRIE..." View Comments...
44 1948 Leaf Max Schmeling. Someone at the printer had a bad day. Not a lot around this badly misaligned; I guess there was some quality control.
45 1948 Leaf Jackie Fields/Max Baer scrap. The card was partially printed at 180 degrees from normal, hence the rotated image. Interestingly, whenever a Fields wrong back is found, the card back is Baer. What this tells you is that Baer and Fields are on corresponding opposite sides of the sheet. Baer in fact is the far left card in the third row (of 7 rows of 7 cards) and Fields is the far right card in the fifth row. This card and the next two likely came from the same sheet feeding mistake.
46 1948 Leaf Al Hostak/Jack Sharkey printing error. This one, the pressman fed the sheet into the press upside down for the red and blue inks. Hostak is the third card from the right in the fourth row; Sharkey is the third card from the left in that row.
47 Mickey Walker/Henry Armstrong rotated print. Another one that made it into the press flipped 180 degrees. Walker is the third card from the right in the 6th row; Armstrong is the third card from the left on the second row. A printing error is easily distinguished from a "ghost" wet sheet transfer because a misprint will be facing the correct way while a ghost will be a mirror image. See the 1948 Leaf Spahn above; note the backwards "B" of his cap.
48 1971-72 Bob Rule. Uh, his position is supposed to be at the bottom, guys.
49 1959 Topps. Some nice football miscuts here.
50 1962 Fleer miscuts. And yes, they line up perfectly.
51 1968 Football. One of my favorite sets of football cards.
I have a wack of micuts and freaky cards including a horrors of war 4 card sheet,I just couldn't bear to throw any of them out. Nice cards by the way - Tony Fryer, Sun, 24 Aug 2008 2:39PM
Hi Adam, I really enjoyed your website. I am one that gets mesmerized by misprints. Thanks for sharing. - Martin Neal, Sun, 6 Apr 2008 3:21PM
