1959 Topps: Who punched Tom Acker in the eye?

 Anyone seen this Tom Acker misprint? Looks like somebody splashed acid in his face or great American hero Jason Varitek gave him the ARod special.

Given I have two and they have the same defect I thought he might have had an injury at first, but I compared it to ebay and TCDB entries and saw nothing similar.  Is this akin to the Ken Griffey Jr card that has the big scab on his elbow?  And was that big scab a true printing error or the result of playing on carpet in Seattle and or Cincinnati?

A real card Sophie's Choice but if she had twins.

 I found a couple choice things on Ebay the other day. this is a '51 Bowman and I almost passed by and missed the added facial hair.  I actually paid something like real money on this for the privilege of not having actual whiskers taped on, just bad pencil marks that were almost lost in the crease.

It makes me wonder if the card was creased first and then someone decided to add some (thankfully fake) whiskers on our pal.

I was really surprised to see this Sam Esposito on ebay given the condition.  Rarely do you get things this trashed sold with a straight face.  Normally people package it in a lot of low level cards or try to hide it in with some randoms.  Rarely does one try sell it at a single card rate. 

 

I mean somebody seem to have put a knuckle clear thru it.  So when it arrived I went running to the binder, I was already decided that this card was too good to  pass up and would knock out whatever was in there.  Probably a 70s miscut, I thought.  So when I got to slot 425 I was met with this.

Sad Trumpet Womp 

                                       womp 

                                                       

                                                          womp 

                                                                       

                                                                              womp 

                                                                                       

                                                                                                 womp. 

I must inform you this is not the first time this has happened.  Usually, one card is clearly way better.  But here my original card has a massive crease across his face, after which someone's dog gnawed off one of the corners.  But my new specimen has been punched clean thru with a karate knuckle punch.  I think it has happened with at least one other 1958.  I seem to recall finding a Cal McLish card that was defaced and rushed to get it as an upgrade for that spot and got to the binder only to discover I had a pretty beat up, but not defaced, Cal already.  So, if anyone wants to start your own trash set, I have dupes to trade.  Almost happened yet again yesterday.  I Saw a beat-up Ray Katt on ebay an went running to find out if it was worth replacing the...much more beat up Ray Katt. 

The Long awaited totally new and unannounced Frankenset Announced anew.

 Here are some mockup pages to a new Frankenset I've been playing around with.  Trying to do 1951 to 85 or so I have a page or two of each year's cards in a binder to have a representation of each year's style.  The layout is not totally random, but for the most part not a lot of thought went into how arrange each year quite yet.  

1960

1962  

There are certainly enough Dicks to fill up most years, but I don't have all the cards I need yet (trade with me) so I played around with adding some of the funniest looking guys. It makes me wonder if I should do a Frankenset for team Chew.

1974  

1975

1976 

You really gotta let Pete Ride the Center Square from here on out.  And you don't need to twist my arm to have the Glorious Afro of Oscar Gamble. 

1978 

Here I come up short again and think to expand the criteria of a theme out a bit. Still playing with a bit of Oscar Gamble and Warren Brusstar's white boy afro along with a spare baseball in his cheek

1979 

Still experimenting with the larger but still totally juvenile theme.  I'm also noticing Mr. Brusstar looks like Mr. Yuk and with that much chew in his lip he probably ought to call poison control.  

I've got all the Dicks added to my want list and I'm cool with pretty much any condition.  They don't have to be in horrible shape, but they also don't need to be in great shape. Any shape as long as they are of modest value.  This set is more about the history of cards and Dick is an easy name to find, which didn't have a lot of superstar players with expensive cards.  Most years up thru 1980 the name was common enough to fill up at least one binder page.  I haven't decided how I will organize each page, alphabetically, numerically, by team, or via haiku, so put your ideas in the comments. 

Mailbox Monotony

 Someone sent me a couple tasty morsels of trashiness but were greeting too much tedium to take credit with a return address.  Well, I thank anonymous benefactors just the same. And I have wracked my brain to no avail. 

They even seem to have checked that the numbers were open and needed, thus saving me any potential Sophies Choice.  

Here are all the open numbers in the trash set in case you too have something to trade me or you wish to send something anonymously.

Trashed and Defaced Frankenset Card # Needs as of July 26, 2026

3 10  21 30 32 34 35 36 37  45 47 48    55 56   61 63 64 65 67 70 72 74   76 77 80 

84 91 93 94 97  104 106 108 109 112 113 121 125 129 131 132 133 135 138 141 144     147 149

150     152 155 158 160 162 163     166 167 170 174 176 178 180 184 185 187 189 194 195 198

200 203 205 207 211     217 219 220 221 222     225 226 228 230 233     235 236 238 239 241

242 243 247     252 257 260 261 262 263 266 267 268 269 271 272 273 274 275 280 281 287 288

290 292 293 298 299 304 305 306 307 308 310 311 312 313 314 316 318 319 320 322 323 324 325 326

327 329 330 331 332 334 335 337 338 340 341 343 344 348 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358

359 360 361 362 363 364 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 375 377 378 379 380 381 383     385

386 387 389 390 391 392 393     399 400     402 403 404 405     407 408 409 410 411 412  

    416 417 418 419 422 423 426     428 429         433 434 436 438 440 441 443 446 447

448 451     456 457 458     461 465 466     468 469 470 472     476 478 481 482 484 

488 489 490 491 493 495 496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503 505 506 507 508 509 511 512 513 514

515     517     519 520 521 522 524 525 526 527 528 529 530 531 532 536 537 538 539

540 541 542 543 544 545 547 548 549 550 551 552 553 554 555 557 558 559        561 563 564 565

566 567 568 569 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 579 580 581 582 583 586 587 588 589 590 591

592 593 594 596 597 598 599 602 603 604 608 610 612 613 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 626

627 628 629 630 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 643 644 645 646 648        651 652 653

654 656 657 658 659 660       662 664 665

Trash cards from the land of my mother's people

My Occasional trading pal in WYO, Roger, who goes by Erdoro on TCDB rounded up a huge pile of stuff over the winter and sent me something like 111 trashed cards.  They go back to the very beginning of things, and I gather he had a bunch of them as a kid.  I think he said his friend marked a bunch of them up and he couldn't bear to just toss them.  I'm glad because I put something like 81 into the binder pages and have some leftover if any of you are making a trash frankenset. How would we go about trading trashed cards, would we argue over whose card is in worse shape and thus worth more in the trade? But I digress.  I can only imagine the adventure these cards have been on out in the rugged hills of Wyoming that my mothers people call home.  And when you come in from the trails Roger, reach out and let me know how I can every repay you for such generosity.  Some highlights.

One thing that is often tough to do with a frankenset is to find the #1 card.  They don't usually have the sort of action that leads to obscure categorization like guys with Glasses, or named Dick, or ball floating in air, or Ivy.  But he has given me a really nice start card. 

In fact he didn't skimp on actual star cards, which he would have been fully justified in hanging onto. 

The Spahn is really sweet and while not exactly trashed it does have paper loss, so it counts.  I'm unlikely to find a Better card that is more trashed, but if I do I'm going to take a couple pens and color in the edge on that Spahn card where it ripped off, as if I totally thought I could get away with it and nobody would notice and that act will make it the winning card in nearly all cases (send me that half honus that splits its face and we may replace it)

I mean how does this happen to cards?

There were also some good early 50s stuff amongst, many of which ended up in the binder before I even thought to take pics, so we'll have to post pages soon.  

This is my fave card of all, as much for its story, as anything.  This card was once in 1 piece, and I was sliding this into the binder when it got part way down and then snapped in half right in my hand.  Now if this happened to most you, many of you would have wailed out in anguish and cried tears of sorrow. And I supposed that's a valid response.  It had a real nice snap when it came off and I threw my arms up and wailed out in laughter at what I just done, totally by accident, yet happily so, much to the confusion of my dear old mother who couldn't understand my joy at having broken one of the cards I'm always fiddlin' with.  So, I slid it back in the binder and showed her...

...Look Ma! No Eyeballs!!

LTTF Parallels of these Series 2 cards for my Action Parallel Frankenset

 I finally went thru 2026 Topps Series 2 and assembled a list of cards I can use that have open slots for your trading pleasure.  These are the base cards, but if you have a parallel of any one of these, trade it to me! 

That's a lotta Pittsburgh

Last two.

Parallels come in different sparkly patterns and many shimmering border colors.  If you have any of these cards in any other form you can help this Frankenset knock off a few numbers.  See my previous posts for examples.  My July 10 Post has a list of open numbers I need to fill.

I got a rip card and you won't believe what was in it!

 I bought another small collection on ebay for the trashed set and there are some very nice things in it.  (Laughs maniacally).  I couldn't use all the cards because some of the numbers were filled and  this happens more and more, which actually gives me some trashed cards to trade.  Anyone else working on a set like this or have some other idiotic use for cards that should be in the trash?  They always say that you can understand the most about a society by studying their trash, so I want to collect it from far and wide.  

For some reason I see a lot of 1958s.  I don't know if the space in the background encourages doodling and writing or if that contributes toward handling them carelessly, but we end up with these.

Now I'm seeing a lot of 57s and Brooklyn.  

Erskine probably wouldn't qualify without that little razor cut.  Even with it I might someday come across something in worse shape at #252.  But I'm not gonna be looking hard.  

The original bigger cards also seem to get their corners nicked off more often, like the cardboard was more brittle.  By the 70s it had to be gnawed at and chewed off.  

By this point many of you will be in tears over the hefty chunk of the Brooklyn team set that I've assembled and the condition it in.  I do not condone or endorse the savage mistreatment of classic cards, I just collect them. For educational purposes only.  

Gil is in 2 pieces, and the tape has somehow fused with the card because there is no stickiness to it.  Or maybe the fibers reattached themselves to each other over the last 69 years.

Originally it was these 2 that caught my eye on this auction.  And I did it the old-fashioned way of hiding out until the last minute to throw a bid up 30 seconds before close and watched it close while chewing my fingernails to the nub.  No bots for me.

I love that this was done, specifically, to a Rip Repulski card.  I understand the separating two distinct pieces with a tear, but why tape it back together.  Looking closer it seems like they used some kind of bandage tape, rather than cellophane.  And what is going on with it, are those...

WHISKERS??!?!!  

What kind of degenerate rat bastard tapes whiskers onto a torn card? Trade them to me so then I will know.

Whoever you are I need another pile of cards, or several small piles of cards that I can sort through and add to the open spots.  If you have a pile, that you have been hanging onto all these years, it's time to trade them.  I'll even trade regular non trashed cards for them.  I'll take any year/brand/player and love to mix it up with old and new. The more trashed and the better the variety the more I'll trade for them.