Correcting Baseball Card Errors

Today I will show some custom baseball cards in the form of corrections to several of the more famous errors and anomalies on vintage cards. There are many cases of reversed negative and wrong player photos on modern cards, but I will be focusing on the classic pre-1970 cards.

First, I will start with the 1957 Topps Hank Aaron. This was a card with a reversed negative, and Topps did not issue a correction. The original card makes Hammerin' Hank appear to be left handed. This was not a technically difficult card to correct, but I always wanted to see the card as it was originally intended:

Original 1957 Topps Hank Aaron

                                                     with reversed negative corrected

Let's stay with Hank Aaron for now. In 1956 Topps used a picture of Willie Mays for the action photo on the Aaron card.

Original 1956 Topps Hank Aaron

and here is my version with an actual picture of Hank Aaron sliding.

The next card is more of a practical joke then an error. Lew Burdette posed as a left hander on his 1959 Topps card. I read somewhere that notorious prankster Warren Spahn had put him up to it. This not only was missed by Topps, but they also spelled his name wrong too - Lou instead of Lew!

Original 1959 Topps Burdette

My corrected version of this card.

Here is another case of a reversed negative that Topps missed that resulted in a left handed catcher on a baseball card.

Original 1969 Topps Larry Haney

and my corrected version

Here's another practical joke card. Tommy John posed in an action pose for his 1969 card and left the ball in his glove. This was not a technically challenging fix, but here are the before and after:

And finally, I present the 1957 Topps Mickey Mantle card. For years, collectors have theorized who the mysterious figure is in the back of the card and why did Topps feel compelled to air brush the figure out of existence. There are actually 2 subtly different versions out there with different degrees of shading on the hidden figure.

The original 1957 Topps Mickey Mantle

And finally, after many hours of work cleaning and filtering the image, we see that the mysterious figure is actually;
long lost pilot Amelia Earhart, missing since 1937 during her attempt fly around the world.

check back later for more of my What-If baseball cards!