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Posted By: barrysloate

One of the theories I came up with about these misidentified cards is there is a different perception between action poses and portraits. In the case of the Irv/Cy Young error, it's a distant view of the player and the facial features wouldn't be clear enough to distinguish anyway, so most collectors generally accept it.

On a potrait card like the N403 Yum Yum Anson/Williamson error, we all agree that because it is actually a photograph of Williamson captioned "Anson", it could only be identified as Williamson. The error is just more obvious.

There are plenty of cards that are labelled correctly that still bear little resemblance to the player, such as the T206 Walter Johnson pitching pose. That's a really poor likeness, and if one weren't familiar with the card I guess it would be difficult to recognize it was him.