Worst Airbrushed Baseball Card
 

A previous post that mentioned the airbrushing of the 1958 Topps Gino Cimoli baseball card got me to thinking, what is the worst airbrushed baseball card that you have encountered. I'll start with this one. The whole thing is basically airbrushed, from the cap that was added to the coloring of the entire uniform.

Looks like Topps airbrushed his teeth

I think there are many candidates for the wost, so I'll let others chime in there. I will say I think the BEST (and honestly the only airburshed card I can think of that I care for at all...) is the '72 Topps Nolan Ryan.

This is also interesting in that by the time Ryan played in the regular season with the Angels in '72, they were no longer using this cap - had moved onto the capital A version that they then used for much longer. There are a few unearthed pictures I've seen recently with Nolan wearing the authentic version of the cap that was airbrushed, so I'm guessing it must have been used in spring training in 1972...

Paying a lot for a 1971 Dick Williams high number just always seemed wrong to me because of the kindergarten art project job of airbrushing they did on his hat...

Attachment 336585


I absolutely love the beautifully majestic shot on the 1973 Frank Robinson card, but they didn't even attempt to add the Angels logo to it, they just opted to simply erase the "Dodgers" from his jersey and let it ride...

Attachment 336586

Not sure if this can even be considered an air brush. It looks like a full on painting! I wondered about this card and how they didn't have a single shot of this guy? Of course, this was a year before I started buying cards, so the first bad one's I saw were that previously mentioned Minton and the equally horrible Mike Paxton from the same set.

I think every 1977 Seattle Mariner card qualifies.

Here's another that's hard to look at...

What a great topic! There are so many to choose from. The 1952 Topps set is gold mine of bad cap logos ...

Yep. Check this out - this one if anything is actually predicting the future! The logo fairly closely resembles a modern Cubs cap insignia, but the problem is they didn't use it until 1957! In 1951-52, the Cubs would have been using the wishbone C logo (similar to a modern Cincinnati Reds cap) which was more elongated than what you see here. And the white piping around the C? Yep - also did not come about until 1957. Whoever did this airbrush job did a crappy one - and in 1952 he / she would have gotten an F - but what's humorous about it today is likely few people would actually notice because - well yeah - it DOES look like a Cubs cap!

Maybe this would be better classified as the most strategic rather than the worst

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...539/img186.jpg

Sometimes it takes practice to get it just right

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...539/img388.jpg

Sometimes they spawn an entire production line

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...psdf52c2b2.jpg

One the brushers missed

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7d982a44.jpg

A brusher with a sense of humor ?

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4eba623e.jpg

A brusher who did not know how the brush

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0fwd5hpt.jpg
http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...psjpm8idnx.jpg
http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/...psrhhg3wbs.jpg

My 2 favorite bad ones

http://www.baseball-cards.com/jpgs/6/1969-047v.jpg
http://www.baseball-cards.com/jpgs/6/1969-077v.jpg

The nice thing about that Manny is you can still admire the card even if the lights go out.