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....
