Minor Leagues: 80s ProCards

Some companies I have found are excellent with quality control. For instance, you can go back decades and look through every set and every sport and find virtually no reverse negatives from Panini. The farther you get away from the major leagues and major manufacturers however, the errors abound. Though cards from the last twenty years have improved, minor league cards from before 1995 were absolutely riddled with errors. Not only were the factual details of every player and presentation of every photo presumably deemed not as important as their big-league counterparts, the sheer size of many of these sets combined with lack of readily available information on the teams resulted in a dream for error hunters. On top of that, price guide companies and online checklist compilers seem to find searching for errors in these sets equally as unimportant as their card company counterparts. Hence, many of the errors in minor league cards are unlisted.

In later posts we will look at reverse negative errors from ProCards sets in the 90s, as well as rev negs by Classic, Star Company, CMC and others. But this post will focus on reverse errors in ProCards minor league sets from 1986-1989. A couple of notes before the pics: the 1988 set is easily the shoddiest looking of the bunch, but amazingly there are no rev negs in the unwieldy, 2,178 card set. At least none that I have found yet. Also, I have found no rev negs in any of the ProCards basketball sets.

1986 ProCards Iowa Cubs #24 Bobby Ramos (UER, unlisted). Not only can you see the reversed 5 on the shirt, but if you compare the card to other ones in the Iowa set, the stadium roof on the others is on the right hand side of the card, unlike this one on the left-hand side.

1986 ProCards Omaha Royals #26 Nick Swartz (UER, unlisted). Everything on the signs in the background is reversed.

1986 ProCards Phoenix Firebirds #17 Bob Moore (UER, unlisted). This one is difficult, but if you compare the logo on the hat with the one on the bottom of the card and with ones on the hats of the other players in this set, the bird's head is facing the wrong way. Also, he is listed as a righty (though that can also be tricky because batting positions are routinely wrong in minor league cards).

1986 ProCards Shreveport Captains #7 Angel Escobar (UER, unlisted). Everything on this card is obviously reversed. I like the backwards Burger King logo in the background.

1986 ProCards Sumter Braves #4 Johnny Cuevas (UER). This is the only one I saw listed as a reverse negative anywhere for 80's ProCards sets (tradingcarddatabase.com has it marked), though it is quite apparent by the inverted S on the hat.

1986 ProCards Vermont Reds #11 Ron Heinka (card on left, UER, unlisted). Other than him being listed as a lefty on the back, the way that you can tell this is reversed is because the background trees in all the other Vermont cards in the set are all faced exactly oppositely to the ones on this Henika card. For instance, compare it with the Denbo card on the right, which is correct.

1987 ProCards Salem Angels #23 Mikael Musolino (UER, unlisted). In the other Salem Angels cards, the floodlight pole in the background is on the right side, and the bleachers are facing to the right instead of the left.

1987 ProCards San Bernardino Spirits #3 Jeff Edwards (UER, unlisted). All the lettering in this card is reversed, and Edwards is right-handed in reality.

1987 ProCards San Bernardino Spirits #14 Leon Baham (UER, unlisted). Same case as the Edwards card above.

1987 ProCards Tidewater Tides #31 Dwight Gooden (UER, unlisted). Compare with the 1987 TCMA version on the left. Same pic, but photo is flipped on the ProCards version. You could say it's impossible to tell which one is the actual reverse, but like Panini, TCMA were another company that didn't reverse many cards so I'm willing to bet it was ProCards that made the error here.

1989 ProCards #164 Mike Dull (UER, unlisted). Dull was a lefty, the J on the hat is reversed, and the Coors logo in the background is reversed.

1989 ProCards #176 Rob Natal (UER, unlisted). Everything in this card is clearly inverted, but the appearance of a left-handed catcher should be enough of a clue.

1989 ProCards #609 Scott Cooper (UER, unlisted). The "NB" on the hat, the "Franklin" on the batting glove, the "Coke" on the advertising board: all reversed.

1989 ProCards #1833 Eric Gunderson (UER, unlisted). All the lettering is reversed, and Gunderson should be a lefty.

1989 ProCards #1857 Quinn's Cards (UER, unlisted). All the writing on their shirts is reversed.

1989 ProCards #1859 Grounds Crew Geneva Cubs (UER, unlisted). Once again, all the letters are reversed.

1988-89 Procards IHL #59 Dan Vincelette (UER, unlisted). One of two hockey reverses I found, the logo is flipped and the number on the sleeve is reversed on this one.

1989-90 Procards AHL #312 Gord Kruppke (UER, unlisted). The 4 on the sleeve, the CCM on the glove, and the Red Wings logo are all reversed.

Join me next time for ProCards reversed negatives from the 1990's, and afterwards minor league reverses from other sets. There's a lot of these babies, and it will take me a few posts to get though them....

Random Unlisted Reverses in Major Sets

Hi all, as I said last time this post will be a short one on unlisted reverse negatives in major manufacturer sets. For all I know, there are many more out there that nobody has found yet- maybe even a couple from the last twenty years, though finding reverse negatives after 1995 can start to feel like looking for a needle in a canyon full of needles. There's one from 2002 here, but the others are from the heyday of junk wax, like most trading card errors. And I'm not covering every single one I found, because the others will be listed under different post categories.

 After this, it's off to the minor leagues....

1976 Topps #468 Jesus Alou. Word is ol' Jesus posed lefty for this photograph, even though he is right-handed. There are plenty of cases of players posing the wrong way for their photos in card history (those wacky athletes), but for some reason someone at Topps in 1976 really didn't like Alou doing this and decided to show him what's what. So they flipped the image so he would be posing in his natural batting position, rendering his hat, shirt, and Shea Stadium in reverse. Never heard of another case like it. (Side note- the COMC logo is obviously not part of the actual card.)

1979 Topps #239 Willie Horton UER. That reversed Blue Jay logo again.

1991 Bowman #328 Junior Ortiz UER. Notice the backwards "S" on Ortiz's shirt, the fact that he is portrayed as a left-handed catcher, and Ripken sliding in from what appears to be first base.

2002 Upper Deck #582 Marty Cordova UER. The "Orioles" on the shirt is reversed, Cordova is a righty, and what is presumably the word "gallon" is reversed on the outfield fence in the background.

1991 Bowman #313 Kirk Lowdermilk. As mentioned in a previous post, this card is listed as a UER in price guides but not for the reason that it is a reverse negative.

Players with Multiple Rev Neg Cards

The following is a list of athletes that have had more than one reverse negative error in their trading card list. With the exception of Jim Otto (and only because the same scan is used for two different of his cards), I have only seen baseball players. You'll notice that there are a conspicuous numbers of Yankees in this list. For some reason, that backwards "N" in the "NY" on the cap was hard to catch employees in quality control...

Gene Woodling: 1954 Bowman #209 and 1962 Post Cereal Canadian #71

Ray Schalk: 1921 W516-2-2 #7 (also misspelled Shalk) and 1921 W521 #15

Ted Simmons: 1971 LPIU Team Postcard #NNO (not pictured) and 1972 St. Louis Cardinals Team Issue (pictured above, also has a corrected version). Price guides and Trading Card Database list the 1971 card, but I have yet to see a scan of it.

Marv Throneberry: 1979 TCMA Baseball History 50's #173A (corrected version exists) and 1990 Swell Baseball Greats #77 UER

Dennis Sherow: 1980 TCMA Memphis Chicks #18 UER and 1982 TCMA Minor League #994 UER. Both are unlisted. The way that you can tell the 1980 card (pictured on left) is a rev neg is because if you compare it to other Memphis Chicks players in the set, the logo at the top of the shirt has the stripes pointing to the right instead of the left. Most closeup pics are nearly impossible to tell if they are reversed, but the smallest detail can provide you a clue if you look close enough.

Don Mattingly: 1987 Star Don Mattingly "Yankee Hitman" #NNO UER, 1989 Star Platinum Don Mattingly #49 "1985 AL MVP" UER (card in scan is the one in the bottom left corner), and 1995 Fleer #76 UER. The Star cards are both unlisted. Donny Baseball was a lefty and he is either fielding or hitting righty in these cards. Mattingly is also one of just two players I have seen that have at least three reverse negatives.

Mike Schmidt: 1988 Star Mattingly/Schmidt #1 Baseball's Best Promo UER (also unlisted) and 2002 Topps Finest Moments Autographs UER. In the Star card, only the Schmidt pic is reversed; the Mattingly pic is correct.

Cecil Fielder; 1989 Score #120 UER Back Photo, and 1990 Sports Cards, Inc. Superstars #9. Yes, the 1990 card is not officially licensed card, but it still counts to me.

Kirby Puckett: 1990 Star Platinum #40 and #43, both UER's and unlisted. Notice the two T's and backwards 4 on the left side of Puckett's shirt; also, he batted right-handed. This is the only case I have seen where a single player has two different reverse negatives in the same set. Star Co. really just didn't give a shit. You'll see more in a later post.

Cal Ripken Jr: 1992 Fleer Ultra Award Winners #21A, 1992 Star Stellar #48 UER (also unlisted), and 1994 Investor's Focus Gold Card #NNO UER. The other guy with 3 rev negs. In the last two Cal is a lefty, where he was a righty in reality. Also, in the Star Platinum card, the Rawlings logo on the glove is backwards.

Tom Glavine: 1992 Pepsi Canada #5A (corrected version exists, neither is really more rare than the other) and 1992 Players Choice (don't know the number of this card). Glavine is actually a lefty, the "A" on the cap is pointing to the left in the Players Choice card (it's airbrushed out in the Pepsi Canada card), and on both cards you can just make out the backwards E and 7 on the left hand side of the back of his jersey.

Jim Otto: 1988 Swell Greats #95 and 1989 Swell Football Greats #108 (both UER and unlisted). Both cards use the same picture, and were manufactured by Swell, who obviously decided to use the same scan for the 1989 card as the 1988 card. It is difficult to tell because Otto's jersey number, 00, looks the same both ways and there is not enough detail on Plunkett's jersey to be helpful. However, I found the following pic in Google Images to confirm my suspicions:

This is the official pic used by the NFL on the Pro Football Hall of Fame website (http://www.profootballhof.com/hall/story.aspx?story_id=2558) and is obviously the same pic as the one on the cards, but facing the other way.

Next time will feature a short post on unlisted cards in major manufacturer sets, and then we will delve into the wild and lawless world of 80's and early 90's minor league cards....