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Errer Cards: Reverse Negative


The 1957 Hank Aaron Topps card #20 is probably the most famous reverse negative card out there. A right-handed batter shown batting left handed. It says right on the back "Hammerin' Hank was the Top Batter in the National League in 1956." You'd think someone at Topps would have caught this, but I don't believe they ever issued a corrected version. Oh well, all the better for collectors.


I picked up this Aaron card on ebay last year for about $30, which I thought was a good deal. I'd seen it listed for twice that in almost all cases. I'm not much of a grader, but given the year this card looks to me to be in good to very good condition. It has creases from left to right, one right through the Brave's patch, and the other just above the lettering, and those only show on the card front. It's off centered and has slightly rounded corners. But all in all it's a nice looking card to me and that's all that matters, especially at that price. BTW, that's the most I've spent on any card, ever, except for Pete Rose' 1964 Topps card.

Here's a card of a right-handed batter shown batting left handed, but it's not a reverse negative.


Leave it you Ueck to fool a photographer! That's Uecker's 1965 Topps card #519.


That's Larry Haney's 1968 Topps card #42 on the left and his 1969 Topps card # 209 on the right. Topps used the same photo both years for many players, but this is the only reverse negative from 1969 that I'm aware of. No, Haney is not ambidextrous.


Here's an uncorrected error card of Gantner's 1987 Topps card #108, as evident from the backwards Milwaukee Brewer's logo on his cap. I just learned THIS YEAR that the Brewer's logo is more than a glove with a ball in it - it's a combination of lowercase letters 'm' and 'b' for the initials of the team. To think of the number of times I've looked at that logo and never noticed.  Sheesh.



Here's Juan Gonzalez' 1990 Donruss/Leaf rookie card #33 on the left (correct) and error card on the right (also card #33). This guy turned out to be a RBI machine. His 162-game average was 135 RBI's!

Hope you enjoyed.

CinciCuse Bill
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Comments

  1. Brett AlanApril 11, 2020 at 10:44 AM

    Wow...I'm trying to imagine how expensive a variation of that 1957 Aaron would be. It was never corrected, but if there were two versions and one were significantly harder to find, that would be a super-expensive card.

    ReplyDelete
  2. FujiApril 11, 2020 at 11:29 AM

    I think the first time I heard about a reverse negative being used was back in 1982 with the Fleer John Littlefield card. The printed both error and corrected versions, but one was much more scarce than the other. The other famous one from my childhood was the 1989 Upper Deck Dale Murphy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. night owlApril 11, 2020 at 11:32 AM

    Long time ago, I did a post about how I had just discovered that the Brewers logo was an "M" and a "B". Every since, I've come across many people who also took a long time to figure it out.

    I also didn't know about the Gantner card until now. Gonna have to go look at that one in my collection.

    ReplyDelete
  4. BoApril 11, 2020 at 5:23 PM

    There's a whole blog dedicated to the topic. Very comprehensive across all sports. http://revneg.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete

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