10 Cool Error Cards

published July 11, 2009

There was always excitement when you opened up brand new pack of baseball cards. Once you stuff that rock hard brick of gum in your mouth, you'd see how many good players you had. The Cal RIpkens, the Don Mattinglys, the Ryne Sandbergs were always welcome. The Vance Laws, the Alvaro Espinozas, the Mike Gallegos.... not so much. Once in a while, you got a real treat. You got an error card. Usually subtle, you wouldn't know about them until you looked up the price and saw that the error version of the card was worth over $30! Here are some of the cooler error cards over of the years. No photoshop here!

We start off with the most famous error card that has become sort of a cult hit. The dirty words on the end of Billy's bat were written so that Billy could distinguish which bat to use in batting practice, and he claimed to have accidentally picked it up for this picture. I definitely ought to check my collection to see if I have this one.

Baseball's all time home run king* got off to a dubious start on this 1987 Donruss error. The guy on the left card is Johnny Ray. But heck, they're both skinny black guys with moustaches. Johnny Ray was a decent player in his own right, with 53 career home runs - about 20 less than Bonds had in 2001 alone. The error card is valued around $300 as opposed to about $15 for the correct version.

Hank Aaron was the all time home run leader with 755. Out of 755 home runs, he hit 0 of them left handed, as he is pictured in this classic card.

Introducing Jerry Browne the white guy! Except that the real Jerry Browne is a black guy. The real Jerry brown (right) is pictured on half of this Fleer card, and your guess is as good as mine as to who the white guy on the left is!

This is one of the more glaring error cards of all time, and one that I actually own many of. The worst part is that Donruss made so many errors, that the price was only 10 cents higher than the correct version. The card on the left is John Smoltz's longtime teammate Tom Glavine. Both are among the best pitchers of all time, making this one of the most shameful error cards ever.

Reverse negatives are one of the more common errors (like the Hank Aaron above). Often they are no big deal, but here it's a fail. Shawn Estes is a left handed pitcher, and I'm pretty sure his number isn't a backwards "S".

This one is a trick. Upon first glance, it's quite obvious. It's a skinny guy named Sanders! Well, this actually is Tony Gwynn and he actually was skinny! This is a spring training card where he wore the jersey of teammate Scott Sanders - a white pitcher.

Here is another fairly glaring error that never got corrected. The pictures in these two cards were swapped. That's actually Juan LeBron on the left, and Beltran on the right. Carlos Beltran is one of the best players in the game, a current all-star center fielder for the Mets. Juan LeBron never made it out of the minors. Lucky for him, LeBron did somehow become a household name anyways. Go figure.

This rookie card of the greatest DH of all time is actually pitcher Edwin Nunez. Both are latino names that start with Ed, but that's about the only excuse I can think of.

Errors aren't limited to only baseball cards. Here's Bret F-A-R-V-E. I can't blame them for spelling it how it's pronounced. Bret FAVRE is in a different league than say Marques Tuiasosopo when it comes to name spelling and quarterbacking skills.