As you may have read Thursday morning, upcoming is the 20th anniversary of one of the most famous baseball cards of all-time, the Billy Ripken error card, formerly known in Beckett Baseball Card Monthly (a.k.a. the magazine responsible for the most exciting day of an 11-year old’s month) as the “Rick Face” card. Of course, the actual word on Ripken’s bat was a bit different, and it was covered this week by Ripken himself in an article on CNBC.com. After the Ripken card, a fad of sorts in baseball card collecting began—the error card craze. It had actually started about a year earlier, but Ripken took it to an entirely new level. There is little doubt that card companies were intentionally making mistakes simply to drum up interest. The following is a list of the most classic error cards of the baseball card collecting peak.

7. Barry Bonds

This particular error card was in the special 1987 Donruss “Opening Day” set. It had a picture of Johnny Ray instead of Barry Bonds. There is one thing that definitely could not have happened fifteen years later, unless Johnny Ray’s head became four times as large too.



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6. Ben McDonald

Sometimes one wonders why these errors were even corrected, which is why the conspiracy theory of “intentional errors” holds a bit of water. McDonald’s 1990 Upper Deck card originally had the Orioles logo instead of the Upper Deck “rookie” logo, and they ended up changing it. If I am not mistaken, I believe that the corrected version of this card was actually more valuable than the error version, which makes sense—give the people who have already bought 87 packs of ’90 Upper Deck another reason to go buy more.



5. Frank Thomas

This 1990 Topps card was one of the most bizarre error cards of all-time. It was not because of the error itself—his name was missing on the front—it was because no one even discovered it until several years later. It almost seemed like a hoax or a joke. Beckett listed the error version at hundreds of dollars of value. In the pre-Internet days, there was no way to check on what in the world was going on. How do you discover an error card years after its release?




4. Dale Murphy Rev Neg

There were many Rev Negs back in the day, but Murphy’s ’89 Upper Deck was the most famous. His bat was over the wrong shoulder in the picture. Occasionally, there would be a Rev Neg that was never corrected, and Beckett would still list it in their price guide as a Rev Neg. This was highly disappointing—as a collector, you don’t want to be fooled into thinking that you have something special when you don’t. There was also always one friend who would claim that the Rev Neg WAS in fact corrected and you were holding a very pricey card when you were not. Those were the same people who would get groans from the rest of the class when they raised their hand.



3. Keith Comstock

OH MY GOD! The Padres’ name was in white letters! It should have been in blue! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How do you feel if you are Keith Comstock, you finally make it to the majors, and when your career is over, you are most famous for having an improperly colored team name on your 1988 Topps card?



2. Al Leiter

Steve George made it onto this 1988 Future Stars Al Leiter card instead of Leiter himself. Topps actually was decently correct on their call here too, as Leiter had a fine career and is one of the more underrated commentators for baseball out there. It was always hugely disappointing when you would open a pack of cards, get the potential error card, and it was the corrected version. Nothing could ruin your day faster than that.



1. Billy Ripken

If you read the article about the Ripken card, he admits that he is the one that wrote the phrase on the bat himself. He also wonders how in the world Fleer did not catch the mistake. There is one other nugget of information that he gives up, which is that he gave his entire wedding party signed copies of the card as a wedding gift. Does this not seem strange to anyone else? “Thanks for being in my wedding, here is an autographed picture of myself for you.”



The Top 7 is written by Jackson Majors. He wishes Cal Ripken had a "Sh*t Face" card. Email him at jason@joesportsfan.com.