About This Blog: ERRORS ONLY

Welcome to perhaps the first blog or any other source (to my knowledge) focusing on nothing but reverse negative error cards. Ever since I was a little kid and learned about reverse negatives by looking at Beckett listings, I have been fascinated by them. I don’t know what it is, but they are such a bizarre type of error compared to other errors. It’s like looking into an alternate universe when you look at these cards, and to know that they are mistakes and not supposed to exist makes them even more interesting.

There was nothing more exciting for me than getting my hands on a 1990 Donruss Juan Gonzalez batting lefty with the backwards “19” or a 1982 Donruss Phil Garner with the reverse “P” and “3” looking like he was fielding a grounder and then throwing it to 3^rd base. My dream was to own the 1989 Upper Deck Dale Murphy and 1982 Fleer John Littlefield reverse negatives, but when I was little not only were they very expensive but there was no eBay in the early 1990s, and the chances of finding one at an LCS or in a friend’s collection were virtually nonexistent. These cards were pretty much white whales. I would ask shop owners and they would say they had never even seen one in real life. Now that the internet exists and I have a good job, I own these cards and the relative ease of obtaining them did not make it any less thrilling to put my hands on one them after so many years of pining away.

To begin with, I will preface this blog by stating that nothing that is purposefully a reverse negative will be considered here, whether for nostalgia or gimmick purposes. This includes the 2002 UD Authentics inserts, 2015 Donruss Mike Trout variation, 2010 Bowman Sterling Purple Refractor /10’s, 2011 Leaf Legacy Pete Rose SP’s, 2014 Gypsy Queen parallels, 2011 Heritage Alex Rodriguez (which is not literally a reverse negative by the way), 2013 Topps Heritage Jason Heyward variation, and any other card that was produced intentionally as a reverse negative. Error cards are just more interesting to me.

There are a few cards commonly believed to be reversed which are actually not. The 1962 Topps Clete Boyer is not a reverse negative because if it was the New York Yankees logo on his cap would be backwards. You can tell that it is not because the “N” in NY is facing in the correct direction. (If you have evidence to prove that I am wrong in this, please let me know.) Also, price guides also list the back of the 1990 Upper Deck Luis Aquino as a rev neg, but if you look at it it’s clearly not one. His bio says that he throws lefty and the picture has him throwing right-handed. This is not because the picture is reversed, but because he really was a righty and the bio erroneously listed him as a lefty.

For years I have been scouring price guides, eBay and COMC listing scans, Trading Card Database scans, blog entries and card forum posts, thousands of cards in LCS common sections, using a never-ending combination of keyword searches in Google, and just generally being Rain Man when it comes for searching for unlisted and obscure reverse negative error cards. Each time I find one it’s like finding an Easter Egg. When I first started looking for unlisteds, I didn’t have too many expectations but I quickly discovered that there is a wealth of these errors that are unknown and unacknowledged due to people not knowing what to look for.

Each post in this blog will detail a rev neg card or set of cards, the way I was able to tell it is reversed, and where I located it. I’ll start with the well-known ones and work my way down to more obscure ones, different eras, and different sports. My list is now huge and I look forward to sharing it with you post by post.