30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Monday, February 1, 2016

Exquisite Error

I miss Upper Deck's presence in the MLB licensed baseball card market.  Topps will always be my goto company, but UD definitely gave them a run for their money during the 90's and 2000's.  Products like UD Decade, Sweet Spot, Ultimate, and Masterpieces are all personal favorites and Exquisite was literally in a league of its own.

Living on a teacher's salary limits my box breaks to low end to middle of the road products at best, so just the idea of purchasing a high-end product like Exquisite is nothing more than a dream.  However hat doesn't keep me from buying singles every now and then.

I recently picked up this 2006 Exquisite Collection card of Jeremy Hermida and the son of my favorite baseball player of all-time:


Normally I wouldn't target Tony Gwynn Jr. unless he was pictured with his father, but take a closer look at his signature:


See anything wrong?  Here.  Take an even closer look:


Can you spot the exquisite error?  This is how Junior normally signs his cards/stickers:

COMC Images*

The Exquisite signature kind of resembles the two examples of Junior, but it's different.  It's actually his father's autograph.  You can compare their signatures here:

COMC Image*

I originally saw the aforementioned card on eBay and was intrigued by its uniqueness, so I headed over to COMC and picked it up for $17.  It's a nice conversation piece and connects father and son.  On the flip side, it definitely highlights another issue with "sticker autographs".  It also brings up the question... why the heck was Upper Deck using sticker autographs in their Exquisite product?  If I was paying several hundred dollars for a pack of cards, I'd be pretty disappointed to find player signed stickers.  I guess I should be grateful that I only paid a fraction of the price.

Today's question of the day...

Anyone else own cards that feature an "error" autograph in their collection?

Back in the late 2000's, some of Jordan Swagerty's Donruss Elite autographs actually featured basketball legend, Magic Johnson:

COMC Image*

I actually don't own this card, nor do I own the other two cards with images I borrowed from COMC. But I might need to go out and track down an affordable copy for my Los Angeles Lakers PC.

Well that's it for today.  Have a great week.  Happy Monday and sayonara!

7 comments:

ernest said...

There's one other error I know about, an Angels prospect named Mike Piazza had his autograph show up as sticker autographs on some of the Hall of Famer Mike Piazza's 2014 Topps Supreme cards.

Eric Bracke said...

I have never seen this error. Really good catch.

Marc said...

I don't remember exactly which product it hailed from but all of the stickergraphs for Montreal Canadiens great Henri Richard were placed upside down on his cards.

Matt said...

Positive error found!

Corky said...

When Upper Deck released their 2011 UD World of Sport set Luciano Emilio's autograph stickers were accidently placed on David Beckham's base cards. It was acknowledged by Upper Deck as their error and offered to replace the cards with a proper Emilio autograph card.

The error cards were actually selling for hundreds and honestly at that point Emilio was 2 year removed from a mediocre MLS career so really this was the only time saying Luciano Emilio cards and expensive in the same sentence was acceptable.

Fuji said...

ernest reyes - never heard of those. i would be a little bummed if i picked up that autograph (w/ a hof price tag) and received some minor leaguer's signature. might need to see if i can find a cheap copy to add to my cool card collection

eric & sport card collectors - thanks

marc - another one i've never heard of. gonna research these as well. thanks for sharing.

corky - just read your post on this topic. very interesting. imagine pulling this from a pack. i would have felt like i hit the jackpot. and based on the selling prices... i guess it was like hitting the jackpot.

Man said...

What the heck, eagle eyes my friend eagle eyes-well done