1954 Bowman counterfeit method?
 

Hi all. I've been a lurker for a while reading all the great content. Created an account to ask this question.

I picked up a small lot of 1954 Bowman cards the other day off eBay which included a Hoyt Wilhelm, Robin Roberts, and a Don Larsen RC. The cost was low and the condition was generally low grade. When I received the cards I noticed that the Larsen actually had a back of Andy Seminick #172. The color, size, cut, and feel of the stock all seem ok to my very amateur eye. There is a bit of ink staining on the front which now in light of the wrong back seems obvious to me that this is a fake. I do not suspect the other cards in the lot of being faked as they look original to me and not worth the trouble to fake. All the rest of the cards have the correct backs. When I checked the eBay listing again it does show the Seminick back in the pictures. I remember looking at the picture of the backs but only to make sure there was no writing or major staining. It didn't occur to me to make sure the backs matched the fronts!

But, I'm just curious. Is this a common method in counterfeiting vintage cards to take a common from the same set and print over the front somehow trying to dupe an unsuspecting buyer? And why do it with a Larsen RC in low-ish grade which might be worth $20 or $30? Is it just a practice run for a higher value card?

This is basically a learning experience for me as I'm recently getting more familiar with 1950s baseball cards. The eBay seller has a good reputation with a lot of excellent feedback and sells a significant number of vintage cards every day. So, I don't in any way think it was malicious on their part. It's likely something that slipped through on them just as it did me.

Anyway, thanks for reading and any offering any feedback!

It’s more likely to be an authentic wrong back, usually with the back upside down.

Wrong backs are seen occasionally. If a sheet is run through the press one way and then run through the opposite way, it will get an upside down back of another card, in the parallel slot on the sheet. This is where most wrong backs, certainly not all, come from.

Post an image and we can be certain, though.

Huh that's interesting. The back is upside down from the other cards. It didn't even occur to me it could be a real misprint. I hadn't seen any evidence for another similar Larsen wrong back so I just assumed it was a fake.

Pictures of the front and back attached here

Card is authentic and real! A genuine printing error at the factory. Such errors are usually not hugely valuable, but carry some interest to a minority of us that like the production details and oddity. Finding an exact card this way (like a 1954 Bowman Larsen) is a very difficult search. It happens with pretty much any set that saw mass production; a sheet flipped the wrong way by accident for the other sides printing will come out like this. Pretty neat card

Well that is quite unexpected. Thanks for your insight! A few questions if you don't mind.

I don't know anything about how cards were printed in the 50s. How would a sheet accidentally get flipped? And would that mean that all the cards on that one sheet would be misprinted? If this happened more than once would it mean all the Larsen misprints would have the same Seminick back? How rare are 1954 Bowman wrong backs like this?

Thanks!

Yes, if a sheet was flipped then all the cards on that exact sheet would be printed together with an upside down wrong back. The 1954 Bowman sheet layouts are not fully known, but for example let's say that Don Larsen is the top left corner card of the sheet, row 1 column 1. To create a wrong back, if that sheet is then run through to print the reverses, the bottom right corner card will be the top of the sheet printed in that slot.

I am not quite sure of the press details in 1954, if a feeder machine automated flipping the sheet over or if a human worker sat there and did it over and over all day. Dave might know better and chime in. This happens throughout the entirety of cardboard history - I have an ~1860's CDV that has the front text printed upside down from the lithographers back, and you can still on rare occasion find them today in a fresh pack of Topps. It was even a somewhat frequently recurring issue with 2021 Topps Heritage High Number, as I recall.

All the Larsen wrong backs created like this would have a Seminick back, as the wrong back is dictated by being of whatever card is in the exact opposite position on the sheet. Wrong backs are, much less often, created in other ways. For example, a front sheet from a second series paired with a first series back sheet that was laying around the factory, often happening during pre-production testing.

1954 Bowman is not especially prone to this problem, but I have seen others. An exact card found this way, like a 1954 Larsen wrong back, is quite rare. You might look for an exact card with a wrong back and never find it in decades of searching.



Please forgive my example of a boxing card, but as this is what I have handy on my hard drive and the 1954 Bowman sheet layout is not fully known, here's an example of how it happens.

This Coburn has Gans printed upside down on the back. This happened because the sheet was run upside down. As we know the layout here, we can see that Coburn is in rows 5 and 6 on the left edge of the sheet, so if it was run upside down for the back printing it would be rows 5 and 6 from the opposite right end of the sheet that would be printed on his reverse. Sure enough, that's what happened here. It also illustrates why these are pretty rare - this card is clearly handcut, from a scrapped sheet that wasn't issued because it was caught in quality control. Two mistakes have to be made - a machine or worker has to flip the sheet incorrectly, and then the mistake has to be unnoticed for the card to slip into a pack and be issued.

Agree with Greg 100%. Maybe ToppCat will chime in. Nice card. A number of people collect wrong back cards.

sheets
 

interesting

In case anyone asks, PSA will not grade or authenticate wrong backs unless they are commonly known and are part of an official checklist. 1990 Donruss and 1989 Fleer have a couple of those.

Great thread. Lots of interesting information.
Bob

Wow! Thank you so much for this detailed response. This is really interesting and now I'm glad I asked the question instead of just accepting I was duped. :)

So, I have looked online for any evidence of another 1954 Bowman Larsen wrong back. This basically means Google--which of course is not comprehensive. Would love to know if anyone here has seen or heard about another one of these out in the wild?

Thanks again to this great community!

Thank you! This was going to be another question. I guess there is no easy way of authenticating the card.

SGC will grade and note wrong backs. Super easy.



.

Ah cool thank you!

If true, then somehow this one slipped through. Maybe they changed their policy, since this one is an older cert. Also from 54 Bowman, coincidentally.

As an added bonus, some enterprising previous owner felt compelled to correct some of the fake news on the back.

Nice card, and you are a very lucky individual!

I don't know about PSA, but SGC will for sure. It was very common with the 1987 Topps set. I sent this one to SGC because it was a rookie card of Barry Larkin and had a Conseco back. Heck, SGC even labels it as such.

I know you get a lot of advice on this card, but if you desire to sell it I would have it authenticated. That way, you won't have to deal with a potential buyer having questions regarding the authenticity. Probably well worth the $25 for SGC.

Correct: older cert.

Even more exciting, they de-activated the cert at some point. I bought it, and then got them to re-activate it, maybe about 2 years ago.

Thank you all for your help with this. Special thanks go to Greg for his informative responses and quickly convincing me that my first guess of a fake was likely very wrong. Again it never even occurred to me that I could stumble on such a rare find in a simple eBay lot purchase. I can't believe a card like this that has been in circulation for 70 years was just sitting out there in a regular vintage auction. I did check eBay for other 1954 Bowman wrong backs and find about 6 other examples currently for sale. One of them even has the same yellow ink staining across the front that I see in my Larsen card. Wonder if they are from the same sheet?

Anyway, I will be sending the card to SGC next week for what I hope is confirmation that the card is authentic. In the condition it is in I can't imagine it will grade above a 2 at best, but just the validation it is real (or not) will be worth the price. Will keep this thread updated on the grading result when I get it back from SGC.

Here's one from 1941:

Rotated print sheet is not the only way to get a wrong back situation, although it seems to be the most common. There are times where a print sheet was run through the front of one machine and then they accidentally swapped the sheets with a different print sheet back before noticing it. Sometimes this even happened across sports or print runs.
I remember that a set like 1989 Topps football had some nonsports wrong backs. One of the early Magic the Gathering TCG sets had another misprinted backs issue. https://www.eternalcentral.com/themi...-backed-cards/

Also happened with 91 baseball and 90 football.

Well I can't answer the question in the thread's title regarding 1954 Bowman, I can show at least one method how 1955 Bowman cards are "counterfeited"/altered...

I pulled this creation out of a recent lot purchase. Apparently, a previous owner of these cards felt the need to "fix" Bowman's error.

That's the year I was thinking about.

Hi all,

Here is the update! Sent the card off to SGC for grading and it's back on it's way to me as of today (love the fast SGC turnaround times-they received August 27th).

Card did grade a 3, which is actually higher than I expected. They do list it as an Andy Seminick #172 card, with no mention of Larsen on the label. Thought that a bit strange, since all the other examples posted here had the name of the player on the front of the card listed on the label. Pics of the graded card attached here. Don't yet have it in hand it's currently in the mail from SGC. Hopefully it makes it here safely.

I think they did not pay attention to what they were doing. But at least you got it slabbed.

I guess so. When I submitted it, I listed it as "Don Larsen #101 Seminick wrong back" but they decided to change it to a Seminick identifier.

Well I guess SGC just made this oddity a little bit odder ...

Topps reused a lot of stuff.

79 with 78 backs.
Mork and Mindy cards with baseball backs

Bazooka gum boxes with 78 baseball or black hole card backs inside.

Back again with the next part of the saga on the 1954 Bowman Don Larsen RC wrong back.

So, after holding the slabbed card for a bit I figured I would probably keep the card as a cool oddity for my small collection. But I didn't like the fact that it was labelled as an Andy Seminck card. It just felt wrong. So, I reached back out to SGC asking why the card was labeled the way it was. I got a prompt response back with apologies that the labeling was an error and they would correct it for free. Sent me an RMA# and a FedEx label to ship the card back. So, I boxed it up and shipped it back off to Florida.

SGC was true to their word to quickly re-slab the card with an updated label. But, the day it was to ship out I received a phone call from SGC informing me that the original label gave the card a numerical grade, whereas it was SGC policy that they could only authenticate wrong backs. So, the card was shipping out to me with the corrected label text but now with an Authentic grade instead of the 3 it had previously. I argued with them saying that there where many examples of SGC graded wrong backs on the market with numerical grades, but they said this was a new policy and that this was my only option. Plus, the card was already slabbed and shipping that day. So, I ended up getting some credit towards a future SGC submission, but I thought they didn't handle it all that well. Anyway, I don't think it changes much about the card as I feel the updated label text is more critical than a low numerical grade.

I got the card back in hand today (see attached pic) and now I'm thinking I'd rather just sell it to someone who would appreciate it more than I would. It was a cool find and good story, but I just don't have any connection to Don Larsen as a player nor any real fascination with card oddities. Hard to determine value with no comps but we will see how it goes.

Nice result; probably a result of merging with PSA's parent company for the new Authentic designation only.

1954 Bpowman Don Larsen WB
 

Here is the print sheet pattern for 1954 Bowman. As can be seen, Larsen was in row 1, Col 5 of sheet 4 while Seminick was in row 2, col 4 of sheet 6.

I don't know how many rows were printed on a full Bowman sheet, but the column flip (4 to 5 or vice versa) certainly supports an authentic wrong back.

Attachment 638419