I was gathering cards to update my 'Errors & Variations-a-palooza' thread when I glanced at my 1972
Ken Boswell IA card (with the red streak in front of him) and took a cue from the T206 guys (who are using plate scratches to back engineer the proposed sheet layouts of those cards) and decided to check out who was next to Ken on the Topps sheet. Well, it turned out to be none other than
Hank Aaron IA. After looking at a ton of his cards, I found something extremely interesting. If you follow the streak on the Boswell card, you can see it 'continues' across Hammerin' Hank's thighs and into the Shea Stadium grass on a small number of his cards. It's a little lighter red/pink on his card, but there it is. Just train your eyes. Funny how I never noticed it before. Although the lines seem to connect almost perfectly, I'm unsure whether they are, in fact, related or if they are just two separate aberrations. Logically speaking, I think the latter is a more likely scenario, since the streaks only appear on the photographs themselves and NOT on any part of the borders. Aaron is the end card on the sheet, so there are no cards to his right and Steve Renko IA is to Boswell's left. After looking at a large number of his cards, I found no evidence of the red line continuing in that direction.
Pretty cool!!
72boswellaaron.jpg
Here's a closeup version of another Aaron card with the streak…
72aaronstreakcloseup.jpg