“Official“ cards that never were

[polakoff]

Was going through some cards and I’m not sure why I never noticed this before, but the 1975 card that shows the 1955 MVPs has ‘55 Topps cards of Yogi Berra and Roy Campanella. Of course, Campanella never had a 1955 card with them as he was exclusive to Bowman at the time. I thought it was really interesting to see the card presented very matter-of-factly with no mention of the fact that it didn’t exist.

Does anyone know of any other similar cases? I know that there have been sets that were specifically designed to include cards that never were and these cards were specifically presented as cards that never were (probably starting with the 1994 archives set featuring the 1953 series), but that’s not really what I’m interested in. I’m interested in cards that were presented as if they were real cards even though they weren’t, with no mention of the card being a recent invention. Not sure if I’m making sense with the differentiation but I hope I am.

[realbigfatdog]

1987 Topps had a "Turn Back The Clock" card of a 1962 Topps Maury Wills, which never existed.

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[polakoff]

Guess I did make sense, that’s exactly the sort of thing I’m looking for! Thanks!

[swarmee]

It makes sense. Happened a lot in 1975 Topps MVPs as you point out.
Here's one. Topps made a lot of reprints as well of portions of rookie cards as solo cards for autographing and their various modern sets.

1990 Topps - [Base] #663 - Fred Lynn
Courtesy of COMC.com

[brewing]

They did it for Oliva too.

Also the 1975 Topps MVP cards have a couple of Campanella's that weren't real.

[ocjack]

The interesting item of note on that Campanella card is that it shows him with an "LA" on his hat.

[polakoff]

This is all excellent! The solo rookie reprints rather than duals interest me less for some reason, probably because those usually use the same design as the 2 or 3 for 4 in 1 card originally did but with only one picture, which makes it not true-to-form (ie, they usually have a ROOKIE STARS header, which didn’t exist on single player cards - I can think of 3 different 68 Ryans they did with just him on the card, including ones with different photos, but all had the Rookie Stars header). If there was a redesign as if it were actually a single player card then that would intrigue me more, like the 64 Oliva or 75 Lynn posted above, but still doesn’t excite me that much since those cards actually exist, often with the same photo.

But, I think I’m just more interested in cards that totally don’t exist like the Campanella or the Maury wills mentioned above.

[polakoff]

And now that I look at it, something really interesting about the Maury Wells is that he appeared on the 1975 MVP card with Mickey Mantle, but the fake mock up they used for that is different from the one that used on the 1987 card. You can see on the 1975 version his first name is not centered above his last name like it is in the 1987 version, and they use periods in SS in the 1975 version but not the 1987 version.

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by swarmee

It makes sense. Happened a lot in 1975 Topps MVPs as you point out.
Here's one. Topps made a lot of reprints as well of portions of rookie cards as solo cards for autographing and their various modern sets.

1990 Topps - [Base] #663 - Fred Lynn
Courtesy of COMC.com

I never understood why Topps took the effort to make a "new" mock-up of a 1975 Lynn solo card in 1990, they already had one....IMO, the 81 Topps K-Mart card looks much better than the 90 version due to the wider cropping of Lynn's image.

[swarmee]

After seeing the second card, I will say I originally thought the blank space was a masking agent like whiteout, not his jersey. That is a much better card look. But most likely, it was easier to start from scratch than to dredge up a 10-year-old proof from the archives.

[ALR-bishop]

Agree with you John. When I first saw that card I thought what in the world happened to his arm

[G1911]

There were a ton of these put out by Topps in the early 2000's, there was the 150 card annual "All Time Fan Favorites" set that featured past players on older Topps designs for a few years especially that had a ton of them.

Others were handed out at Nationals in the mid 2000's, players missing from classic Topps designs like this Ford:

[polakoff]

Originally Posted by G1911

There were a ton of these put out by Topps in the early 2000's, there was the 150 card annual "All Time Fan Favorites" set that featured past players on older Topps designs for a few years especially that had a ton of them.

Others were handed out at Nationals in the mid 2000's, players missing from classic Topps designs like this Ford:

This falls into the “less interesting” category for me. I think I’m more interested in cards shown on other cards, like the moles noted above, than a brand new creation.

[Gary Dunaier]

I don't know if this would qualify within the parameters of this thread, and even if it does I may be misremembering and/or misidentifying it, but let's see...

I seem to recall the 1963 Topps Rookie Banquet program had an image of a 1963 Pete Rose rookie card that just shows him by himself, as if it were a regular card.

If memory serves me right the image used on the "card" in the program was the same as the one used on the actual 1964 Topps card (which would make sense because the image used on the actual '63 Rookie Stars card is just his head extracted from that photo).