Sunday, July 12, 2009

Phil Garner and the No Good, Very Bad Day

Where does one even begin in talking about what's wrong with this card? My only guess is that someone at Donruss (now Donnini) really had a thing for old Scrap Iron. I know it was 1982 and that computers where the size of small warehouses and there was no instant access to every baseball stat ever on the intertoobs but still... who was asleep at the wheel on this one? Did they have a few glasses of wine before putting this one together? At any rate, their mind was obviously elsewhere.

Seriously, how many errors can you find on this thing in it's amazing, headsplitting, earth shattering errorness?

Once again, thx to Daddy D for this card I'd never even seen before last week.

6 comments:

  1. My homage to the '82 Donruss Phil Garner card:

    http://nightowlcards.blogspot.com/2008/12/cardboard-appreciation-1982-donruss.html

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  2. I hadn't seen this card. In 1982 I collected Fleer from packs and bought sets of Topps and Donruss. This is one messed up card!

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  3. Night Owl, I posted this over at your blog:

    Is the pic of Phil in a Pirates uni another "error"? I know he began the '81 season with the Pirates, but how could no one at Donruss get him in an Astros uniform? It looks like spring training, so I guess they were at work pretty early, but still. The truth must be known!

    And I love that you called the old school Pirates uni a school bus. Nice touch.

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  4. I replied, but here it is:

    Donruss didn't produce another card of Phil Garner in an Astros uniform in 1982. Garner was traded on Aug. 31, 1981, so it would have been too late for card companies to get an updated photo of Garner back then (most photos from sets then were from spring training of the previous year).

    Topps also had Garner in a Pirates uniform in its 1982 set. But in its '82 traded set, they showed Garner in an Astros uniform.

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  5. Thx for the info! That makes a lot of sense. Does the Topps card also list him as an Astro (as opposed to a Pirate)?

    And when you pulled these, did you know beforehand about the error (from Beckett or someplace) or did you figure it out?

    I'm also assuming Garner was also hurt at some point in '81, but still made the All-Star team. He got in 56 games with the Bucs pre-trade, and between the two teams only got in about half a season. I'm going to track that down. I had glanced at the back of the card and it never occurred to me it was a mid-season trade.

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  6. The Topps card from the main set shows and lists Garner as a Pirate. Back then, that was pretty standard for guys who were traded very late in the season or in the offseason.

    If I remember correctly, I pulled the reverse negative card first and thought 'how weird," and then pulled the corrected one and was thrilled. Beckett was only a once-a-year price guide back then, so you had to wait a whole year to figure out what were errors and what weren't (and even then it wasn't completely accurate).

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