I thought since it was April Fool's Day today it might be fun to talk about error cards. No, there's no real connection between error cards and April Fool's Day, it is kind of an upside-down day. In any case, when I started collecting in 1986 I really never took notice of error cards from the past. Even though plenty of error cards existed in 1986, like the famous 1982 Fleer John Littlefield card, errors and variations just weren't a major part of the collecting lexicon in 1986.
It didn't take long for me to figure out that error cards and variations were soon to become a well chased and often rare find in the card world. The very first error card I fell in love with came from 1988 Topps. As a rookie card collector, it was already a ton of fun pulling Future Stars from Topps products in 1987 and 1988, but when I ended up with two different Al Leiter cards from this set, I really did have to scratch my head. In fact, I don't even think I knew at the time which one featured the real Al Leiter.
I remember preferring the corrected version of the Leiter, thinking the backdrop looked almost surreal with the sky appearing to look like something out of a horror movie like "The Fog" or something apocalyptic.
Another card I would later become a fan of is from one of my favorite 80s sets of all-time, 1986 Donruss. The set has such a memorable design, with the borders very reminiscent of old Max Headroom episodes.
The variation here with "The Big Cat" is on the back, not the front. On one version of the card has an accent mark over the E in his first name while one does not. The "No Accent Mark" card is far more challenging to find, with only 25 Gem Mint copies graded compared to 212 copies of the "Accent Mark" card in existence. It was tough to track down the "No Accent Mark" card, but I'm sure glad I found one a few years ago as very few hit the open market.
I feel like once 1989 cards came out, the error and variation boom really started, with the 1989 Upper Deck Reverse Negative taking center stage along with the many variants of the infamous Billy Ripken card from 1989 Fleer. But the two cards that had the biggest impact on me as a kid were the Letier and Galarraga cards that I featured here. It does surprise me a bit that Galarraga's cards are still very inexpensive. He's one of the most well-loved players from the era, who hit 399 career home runs and made two miraculous recoveries from cancer during his playing career.