Thursday, October 18, 2012

Dime Box Heroes: Anytown, USA

2001 SP Legendary Cuts #2 Jimmie Foxx

Lately, one of my more frequent points of discussion has been the topic of "error cards".

They've always been a major part of my collection. After all, how often do you get the chance to actually celebrate mistakes?

I've already addressed a few general groups of slip-ups from the wonderful world of errors, such as the "player swaps" and the "reverse negatives".

Perhaps the most common error found on cardboard is the dreaded typo.

While they're bound to happen from time to time, they can still make for some pretty interesting pieces.

Despite what 1981 Donruss might have you believe, Bobby Bonds did not hit 986 homers during his career. (Kind of ironic that a member of the Bonds family would receive an error like that, isn't it?)

As I recently found out, even the famous Nolan Ryan rookie card is officially listed as an "error". Looks like someone at Topps made a slight slip-up when trying to spell the word "sensational".

On the surface, you could put this Jimmie Foxx card under the "typo" file.

However, it involves a lot more than just a simple extra number in the stat column or a missing letter from his player bio.

For a while, this seemed like any other card in my collection.

It wasn't.




Can you spot the error?

It only took me a good two years to notice it.

While flipping through my A's binder for the umpteenth time, I decided to take this one out of the page for a closer examination. It's a nice card, not to mention a former dime box find of mine.

That's when I saw it.

Take a closer look at the personal information just below his name.

Last time I checked, the city of "Anytowne, Somestate" does not exist.

On top of that, I'd venture a guess that it's against the laws of science for a human to have a height of zero feet, zero inches, and weigh zero pounds.

At least they got the bats/throws part correct. And his birthdate.

It's amazing that no one caught that during the production process. While it's just speculation, I'd hypothesize that the "mock" draw-up for Foxx's base card somehow found its way into packs.

That's the makings of one legendary screw-up right there.

3 comments:

JediJeff said...

That front makes for a great card to have. That back confirms I must own one!

Josh D. said...

I always confuse Jimmie Foxx with Jamie Foxx.

Zayden said...

That's crazy! Its as if someone at the company was screwing around or something or if that was part of a template and they forgot to fill in the right information lol that certainly makes the card extra special!