I Have a Bad Feeling About This.

      A quick look at the date means I should be saying "May the Fourth be with you" and post some Star Wars cards but I just can't do it.  I know you all feel the same way but it has hit me hard this week:

Dear god, I miss baseball so fucking much!!!

Yes, I am shouting and I don't care who hears me.  I rode out April in quarantine just kind of imagining it was a second February.  February is long painful month most years - it's cold, the holidays and football are over, baseball only begins to emerge from the winter - let's face it, February sucks.  This April was February part 2, just an awful fate for what is usually a wonderful month.  And now it seems we are all dug in and the virus is going to stick around all summer and it is seriously beginning to look like we are going to get little to no baseball at all this year.  There is only so much radio replays of world series broadcasts and twitter posts about what happened on this day I can take. Even during times when I was trapped inside due to depression or unemployment or sickness or some combination of those things, there was baseball to look forward to in the evenings to pass the time and distract the mind.  But the weight of our collective situation is hitting hard: we might not have baseball to get us through this.  And for any foreseeable future, the next couple months definitely won't have baseball.  Just writing this rambling paragraph is driving me crazy and pissing me off.   I am going through the entire Kübler-Ross in 250 words or less.  *sigh*

I have been dealing with my lockdown by spring cleaning.  And I mean capital-C Cleaning.  The whole house has never looked better.  So many things have been organized, thrown out, or scrubbed.  But I am running out of things.  I am doing the big parts of the baseball collection and saving the actual sorting of cards for last.  After that, well, I don't want to think about that.  I do a lot of reading in general, both online nonsense and actual books, and I have been diving into more baseball history than any of the virtual seasons that some websites have been running.  Today, on what is usually a Star Wars-centric day, I read a fun TDIH baseball thing and I will now bring everything together and focus on that.  This month is my birthday month, I will be 45 on the 27th.  On May 4, 2007 Julio Franco hit a home run (what would be his last) at the age of 48 years and 254 days.  This is the record for the oldest player ever to hit a home run.

This home run is on the card in the lower left; rare that I have the exact moment on hand.

Even more fun?  That home run was hit off of Randy Johnson, who was 43 years old at the time (and 239 days).  That is 92+ years of pitch and homer!  This is obviously the record for that obscure mark and I imagine it is one that will stand for quite a while.  This little fact has made me feel both very old and surprisingly young at the same time.

In fact, this is as good a time as ever to start a series called Players I Like For No Reason.  PILFNR - it just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?  Julio Franco is a great example of a PILFNR.

Actually, we are off to a bad start because there is a very clear reason I have liked Julio Franco for basically his entire 400 year career - he has the coolest batting stance ever.  Like a lot of kids on the playground and in the batting cage, I liked to copy major leaguers and their stances.  Hell, there is a lovable doofus who turned this into an entire shtick. Alas, I was just an amateur and never saw the future in mimicking the likes of Eric Davis, Gary Sheffield, Don Mattingly, Howard Johnson, Darryl Strawberry, Mickey Tettleton and the like.   But my favorite by far was definitely Julio Franco.  In case you are unaware, you can clearly see his stance on four cards on this next page...

The man stood up basically straight, turned his hip inward, and held the bat over his head back at a 270 degree angle pointing to the pitcher.  And it was actually weirder than I just described.  And somehow it worked! He used the fastest wrists I ever saw to turn the bat, whip it though the hitting zone, and terrorize pitchers until he was 50 years old.  He was amazing and unlike anyone before or since.  I enjoyed the hell out of watching him at the very end of his career on the Mets but he will always be one of those players I always dug way before his association with the blue and orange.

Okay, that bit of giddiness over Julio Franco has made me feel a little bit better, sorry if this post was a little all over the place.  I am going to go watch the despecialized version of the original Star Wars and plan on my tacos and margaritas for tomorrow.  Stay safe and sane everyone.

Love In The Time of Corona.

       Last Monday morning, I went to Costco and Target and it was a very quiet, uneventful trip.  Little did I know that in the next few days, going to the store would become something like a cross between old Woody Woodpecker cartoons where the women kill each other, bridal day at Filene's Basement, and the Road Warrior.  Lucky for me, I am a slight hoarder at all times and don't need soap, sanitizer, or toilet paper any time soon.  Also, I did stop in the card aisle in Target and grabbed some Heritage packs (they had no blasters) and impulsively grabbed a blaster of Star Wars Skywalker Saga cards while looking in vain for Heritage blasters.  This would prove very fortunate and unfortunate but not in the way I thought.  Kind of like how most of our weeks went.

I rarely buy single retail packs of baseball cards because I find all you ever get are base cards and maybe an odd parallel but very rarely do you ever get something of substance.  I figured since all I wanted was some examples of the Heritage, I would just grab 6 packs and go about my business.  These might have been the luckiest six packs of retail cards I ever bought.

One thing I collect in totality is Topps rookie all stars.  I love me some fancy trophies on my baseball cards and I got five of them in these six packs, including two short prints.  The two short prints I got were Pete Alonso and Vlad Guerrero Jr., the two cards I figured I'd have to pay through the nose for on eBay if I ever wanted them, and here I got them in back to back retail packs.

I even got one of the two Alonso league leader cards and three of the postseason cards.  And we are just getting started.

I got five inserts.  That's practically one per pack but it didn't quite come out that way because I got two Tom Seaver Flashbacks stuck together in one pack.  I also got another Flashbacks insert, Rod Carew, and two Then and Now cards - one of them also with Tom Seaver.  Look him up, kids, he was pretty good.  I did get one other base double in the five packs - it was Michael Conforto, a Mets player.  This never happens.  I always get doubles of San Diego Padres or Milwaukee Brewers.

There was one other Met and one other league leader card.  Not too shabby. 

I am pretty sure the 1971 set is in my top five all time designs and the Topps people really nailed the look of it.  The colors, the lower case ee cummings style names, and the random action photos - which were new in '71 - are all here.  Even the random rookie cards and odd position designations are here.  I didn't scan the backs but the backs all look right with the head photos and esoteric write ups. They even have SSPs of the OPC backs, which are some of my favorite OPC variations.  Alas, I did not get one of those.

I also love poses where the hitters are swinging and pointing the bat at your face, I got three of them in three different styles.  I saw that the Alvarez/Aquino rookie card is hot.  I am not one for hot rookies, so if anyone wants to trade for this thing, let me know.

This is the page I ended up piecing together from the five packs, I think it looks great.

I went with just about all posed shots but got a variety and the one action shot is decidedly inactive (I picked a Luke Voit action shot for the vertical example, that's on the back, the back I didn't scan).  I chose a few teams that didn't exist in 1971 just for a little timely juxtaposition.  I was thrilled with my choice to lower myself to retail packs.  I know it will never turn out this good again.  If anyone is putting the set together and has a wantlist, drop me a line and I'll see what I can fill before these go to ebay or Listia.

On the other hand, the Star Wars cards were...underwhelming.  The blaster had 10 packs and 60 cards but no indication on the outside what they looked like; this seems to be on purpose.  The design is very staid.  I prefer a little color and whimsy in my Star Wars cards and all I got here is some stars from a NASA chart or something off of a Battlestar Galactica poster. 

The photos and subjects seem to cover all eight movies, I assume this set was leading into the ninth.  All the cards are vertical and none of the captions are puns or anything.  I am falling asleep just looking at them.

I scanned a second group to continue the monotony.  Not even Natalie Portman can make these more exciting.

Though I gotta say, I do love that middle card, it is a great shot from the climax of the Force Awakens.  Lightsabers and snow, more of that please.  One out of 60 is a very bad ratio.

Each pack had a parallel base card where, oooo pinch me, they changed the color of the thrilling border to a rusty orange or a royal blue.  I suppose the blue is a slight improvement but I got two of those and eight of the rusty orange.

Seriously, the write ups on the front and backs of these cards is more boring than my write up here.

Each pack also had an insert.  These were at least a little more interesting, if slightly repetitive.

Five of them were from the Path of the Jedi set, which were almost exactly the same as the style and substance of the base cards.  I do like that Han Solo card because the highlight of the seventh movie to me was the fact that Harrison Ford didn't mail in his performance as he has in a few of the other movies he's done in his old age (I'm looking at you, Indiana Jones 4 and Blade Runner 2049). So that's 2 out of 60.

The blaster's special insert was a manu-patch and I got A Princess Leia.  I actually have a use for that card so it is staying in my collection.  I might cobble a page of these together but it will hardly find a place of honor in my Star Wars book. 

That was the other Path of the Jedi card, which looks like the other one on the other page.  The best looking card in the whole blaster was the advertisement card with that borderless shot from the first movie.  If anyone wants to use that 10% off code, be my guest.  It really had been an odd week indeed.

May The Fourth Be With You.

        I am a geek and a nerd, I make no apologies for either.  I long ago gave up the idea that I would ever sit with the cool kids at lunch and talk about cool kid things.  Chances are as a kid, if I was sitting with anyone at lunch, we would sit there and talk about Star Wars.  After lunch, we would probably go outside and play Star Wars (I always wanted to be Han, I usually ended up being Chewie).  When I got home, I would probably turn on the TV, pop in a tape, and watch Star Wars.  If there was anything in this world that I was as obsessed with as baseball, it would have to be well, you know...

These cards are from my original childhood collection.  I am pretty sure these original Star Wars cards were mine, but they may have been my brother's.  He tended to hand me down things like this - whether he wanted to or not.  And I never did collect any of the whole series so a while ago, I pared them down to these single nine-pocket pages. 

The red ones are series 2, somehow, we all missed series 3 so I have none of those orange beauties.  Either that or none of them survived.  The green page is from series 4 and it includes the "corrected" version of the "naughty" C-3PO card.  Some parents have way too much time on their hands to be looking for android dong.

I was born in 1975, so I was just a tad too young to remember going to see Star Wars when it debuted in 1977.  I have been told I did see it as a toddler, but I'll be damned if my little brain can squeeze out the memory of that.  I do, however, remember going to see The Empire Strikes Back when I was five. 
 
I am a huge movie geek in general and if I am feeling frisky with the right kind of audience, I will make the argument that not only is The Empire Strikes Back the best Star Wars movie but it is the best movie of all time.  Around certain geeks, this rant is met with joy and wonder.  Around other film nerds, this line of thinking can make people's heads explode.  I will spare you the details, besides, what are we going to talk about if we ever meet for a beer?

I know I collected these Empire cards back in the day yet somehow, all the Return of The Jedi cards I had are long gone.   Perhaps they were traded for some Garbage Pail Kids at lunch or maybe they were stolen by one of my more nefarious 3rd grade friends.  As a grown up I have never replenished them and I am not sure why considering my most vivid memories of both movie and trading card involve the third installment.  I remember the guy who owned the convenience store at the end of the block telling all the kids that he would be the first to have "Revenge of the Jed-ee" cards.  Yes, he pronounced it with a long "e" at the end.  Lord, we all hated that dude, square old adult that he was. 

On this page of vintage odds and ends, you can see the old Wonder Bread cards from 1978.  I think my grandparents gave those to my brother because we were too poor to even afford Wonder Bread, it was store brand all the way in our house.  Those cards are delightfully mangled, I am not sure if it was from being in loaves of bread or from the overzealous love of an 8 year old.

Believe me, old age has not stopped me from buying Star Wars cards.

I bought these Star Wars Illustrated cards at Target last year and I made a page of them.  There is some pretty nifty artwork going on here.  I especially like the one in the middle since I often use the line "I find your lack of faith disturbing..."

Like most people of a certain age with any sort of taste, I am not a big fan of the prequels.  Oh yes, I waited outside for tickets to Episode 1 for 10 hours (not 10 weeks like some, I am not that big a geek...besides, I had a job then).  But after watching that piece of shit twice, I came to realize that no one could ever trust George Lucas again.  The one thing that came out of that time that was pretty good was one of the few things that Lucas didn't produce, the animated Clone Wars series.

If only such thought and attention had gone into the first two prequels that went into this show, they wouldn't be thought of as the steaming piles of childhood rape that they are now.  If you have never seen them, I recommend them highly.

Topps has put out a few different Star Wars Heritage sets over the years, these are from 2004:

Here you see the only Return of The Jedi cards I have.  Jeez, I am gonna have to make a page of those just so I will shut up about it, huh?

Oh, and look, they did some cards for the prequels too.  I have exactly three of them.  This should tell you everything you need to know. 

The bottom six here are the shiny inserts from this set.  I am always a sucker for shiny. 

Topps also did a Chrome set back in 1999.  I am almost certain I should have the whole set of this somewhere since I bought a bunch of this stuff.  For some reason, I also have this page. 

That Vader card is from the Topps Star Wars 30 set from 2007.  I bought a bunch of that stuff too and I have no idea what happened to it.  This page is a big mystery to me.

This page is a hodge-podge of different cards from all kinds of sets.  The one with Leia running away from the At-At is amusing to me since she never even saw them outside.  Yes, this kind of minutiae is important.

There are a few random prequel cards too. I should get more of these only if Natalie Portman is involved.  Maybe Ewen McGregor as well, his rendition of Obi-Wan deserved better scripts than he got.

Speaking of the lovely Ms Portman, there she is again.  The second prequel was worth it if only for that outfit.

These cards are actually stickers and they come from Germany.  I picked them up from a Listia auction and I have never seen them before or since.  That last card is a homemade card I cut out from the box of the original Star Wars Lego video game.  Man, if they had Star Wars Legos when I was 8 years old, my childhood would have been exponentially better.

This page was made from the Star Wars Galactic Files set from last year.

This set delved into the expanded universe as well as the six films.  I have never gotten too too deep into the comics, though I did read the Timothy Zahn Thrawn trilogy and the Heir to the Empire series of books.  I was very upset when I found out that the sequels will not take much from these stories.  I have my fingers crossed that these movies will be better than the prequels.  Let's face it, they have no where to go but up. 

As usual with these big all-encompassing anthology posts of mine, I start rambling as the pages tick by and never really get to a point.  I guess there isn't much of one other than I love Star Wars and trading cards, so if you put them together, I will eat that shit up.  Even if the cards are oddly sized like these:

These six cover the original three films, though the one with Han and Jabba comes from the Special Edition version.  If the prequels are underwhelming than the Special Editions are blasphemy.  Han Shot First.

I didn't scan the backs of these and maybe I should have, because little gems like these are hiding:

On the right is a price tag from a t-shirt (I believe it was a black on black rendition of Darth Vader with the caption "Sith Happens").  I couldn't bear to throw something that cool away so it somehow made its way into my card collection.  On the left is a coupon for the breakfast cereal C-3PO's.  I found this amazing thing in a coupon drawer while I cleaned out my grandfather's house.  You will notice it is dated 1984.  He died in 2010.  The man was not quite a hoarder but let's just say he never threw anything of value away.  This is obviously a genetic trait in my bloodline

I Continue To Treat My Birthday Like I Am 8 Years Old.

       My birthday was Memorial Day.  Please, please, no need to regale me with good wishes (though I will always accept cake). This year I didn't do much of anything on my birthday as most people were having barbecues and such in reverence for war dead and I just felt like sitting around drinking and eating baked goods. So that I did.  I also watched my Mets beat the Yankees; it was a good day. 

So a few days later, I found myself in Target looking for some new shorts because it is suddenly July hot.  As I was walking towards the men's department, I saw the little card nook.  I thought to myself "hey, it was just my birthday, I deserve a little treat," so treat myself I did.  I saw rack packs of Triple Play, and I liked those a lot last year, so I grabbed one of those.  I also saw some of the new shiny Panini Prizm, so I procured some of that as well.  And while I was standing there, my 8-year old impulses kicked in.  I saw a box of discounted non-sports cards for .99 cents a pop and I went a little hog wild.  I also snagged a couple packs of Topps Opening Day and a repack, because, hey, birthday!

There is the little pile I gathered on that Wednesday and I got home a tore them open and ate my lunch and had a ball.  Let's take a look at what I got:

The caricatures were cool last year and they look even better this year.  I also like the clean design to allow the art to pop.   As a way to get around not having an official license, this is by far my favorite.   I don't even mind that Matt Harvey looks like the kid from Napoleon Dynamite.

Here are some more of them, along with the nick-knacks:

I got both the card and the sticker of Starlin Castro, pity I am not a Cubs fan.  I also got some Derek Jeter stickers.  Meh.  Those all-star cards, though, are wonderful, I may have to make a second page of this stuff just to highlight those.  Those Dodgers on the bottom have a destination, but if there is anything you really really have to have, drop me a line and I am sure we can trade - and that goes for any of the stuff we will look at here...

The Opening Day...

...was exactly what I anticipated it would be.  Getting both a Bryce Harper and Steven Strasburg makes me wish these packs had gone to a Nats fan, but oh well.  The picture on the Miguel Cabrera is magnificent.  And as much as I would like to keep that Manny Machado card, I know someone else who wants it more.

Now for some heartbreak...

I had such high hopes for Panini Prizm, but man, do these work better in theory than in practice.  I know Panini is trying to make the best of not having a MLB license. I mean, look, the players association logo is right on the front, so they are kinda official, right? (I have never seen that before) It just seems that the airbrushing and logo obscuring poses just don't work on a chrome-like set.  No matter how nice they try to make these look, they still look cheap.  And it's a shame, because it's not a terrible design and lord knows I love me some shiny.

I bought 4 packs of this stuff and it just doesn't work and didn't grow on me and now looking at it a week later, I really feel the weight of that disappointment.

They have old time players involved in here too, and they have the airbrush/obscuring thing going on as well.  That is fine for 1989 Cap'n Crunch cards but not for modern $3 a pack cards.  I see Panini is putting Extra Edition cards in here too.  Does that mean they won't do a separate set of these like they have in the past?  So many questions. This set is a noble effort but a tremendous failure.  I don't think I will even make a page of these.

Let's cleans the palette by taking a look at some highlights of the repack:

There was the usual odd mix of cards, some new stuff, a chunk of 80's junk, some 90's junk, and some real surprises.  I had forgotten all about the 1990 Starline set.  I remember the posters were quite popular in the late 80's, but I never saw they did a card set until well after the fact and I don't own any of them.  I got 4 cards from the 40 card set in here, including a Met, Frank Viola.  Overall, though, this repack seemed like a real dud until I got to the second to last card, that's where I found that Frank Thomas Supermarket Rookies card.  Thomas is one of the players who shares my birthday; I also did not own this card.  Sounds like fate to me.

I decided also upon a couple packs of last year's Star Wars Galactic Files set:

This was described on it as "the definitive set" full of the original trilogy, the prequels and some canon stuff.  I got a real interesting mix of all three.

There were a couple names I didn't recognize, so I googled them, this may have been an error in judgment when it comes to one of them...all I can say is the internet has far too much time on it's hands when it comes to female characters in sci-fi. SMH.  Anyway, the center card is a Memorable Quotes insert with the best two words in all of the Star Wars universe.  This is the page I made out of these cards. 

And then there were the .99 packs.  First off are some Mario Cart cards.  I had no idea such a thing existed.  So much of my time in the last 20 years had been elegantly wasted playing Mario Cart. Now I have some in card form:

I bought two packs so I would have 10 cards to make a page from. 

These are some leftovers...I have no idea why I stuck them here.  Moving on.


Next to the Mario Cart packs were Super Mario Wii packs.  I bought my brother that game for Christmas a couple years ago and we spent a good amount of time playing it proving that we do not work well together.  We also had a ball...

...once again...

I bought two packs so I would be sure to be able to make a whole page out of them.

A few years ago, a Super Bowl commercial introduced me to the most overplayed song of the decade and Yo Gabba Gabba. Not having any children, I was unaware at the time I was being introduced to Yo Gabba Gabba, I just thought the toys in the ad were the work of some trippy marketeer.  I was wrong. 

I actually kind of enjoy the completely drugged out nature of this show.  I will never have kids, but if I did, I would totally let them watch this.  I felt I should own a page worth of their cards.  Plus, there were 10 in a pack, so I only had to buy one. This made my inner 8-year old very happy.  I even continued the childish non-sports bonanza buy picking up a pack of Bill Nye the Science Guy cards on Listia.  You can see how that turned out here.

The other highlight of the afternoon...

White Castle! I rarely make it down far enough on Route 17 to indulge in these treasures.  But on this day, since I had designated it Birthday present time, I decided to go hog wild.  Luckily, the shorts I bought at Target have an elastic waist band. 

Miscut.

    With all the talk about scissors and cutting your own cards, what happens when the professionals go wrong?  I think when we open a pack of cards, we all have the expectation of perfection or, at the very least, competency.  I think we have all run into a miscut card at one point or another.  Lucky for you, I collect these kinds of cards (so you don't have to).  As I have said many many times before, I love oddball cards, and not just the kind put out by Mr. Turkey or Kahn's Franks.  I also really love the one-of-a-kind gems that can only be created by a great lapse in quality control.

Here are some recent examples:

Pity, that was the first card I saw of Junior in a White Sox uniform.  I'm not sure if that 2007 Kotchman is miscut or just misprint, but if you look, you'll notice how terribly askew the foil is applied on that card.  I bought a whole box of those 2005 Playoff Prestige cards, imagine my joy and horror that for six straight packs, I got a wonderfully miscut card amongst my normal cards.  I especially like the color chart on the side of the Furcal in the upper right.  Let's look at the backs too...

The test pattern is also on the back.  You can see much better how terribly miscut those Playoff cards are, if you just saw the fronts, if you didn't know any better, you might think that askew look was part of the set.

There's more...oh boy is there more...

Once again, Rafael Furcal is prominently featured.  It is quite disappointing, at least to most people, to get a miscut card in a high end product like Gold Label.  Not for me.  I am pretty sure that card was the highlight of that box for me.  Those Bowman Chrome cards on top came in the same pack; considering there were only three cards per pack, that is quite the quality control issue.  Somehow some misprint cards wandered into my miscut pages.  OK, lets look at those real quick.  Those 2005 Bowman gold parallels might, at quick glance, seem fine.  Then, on second glance, you see Bartolo Colon's signature coming out of Shannon Stewart's head - a little creepy.  Also on there is a Hideki Irabu rookie and a Nefti Perez sans foil on the front.  You would think there would be more missing foil cards with the proliferation its use in the last decade or so, but I haven't seen as many in my day as I would imagine I should.

We might as well look at the backs of all these...

You can plainly see that it is Preston Wilson that is the conjoined twin of that Rafael Furcal.  Outstanding.

Some miscuts are more extreme than others...

That Shea Hillenbrand is barely miscut.  It is almost just really really off-center.  But, I determined it to be just miscut enough to join the pages.  Luckily, a few much better examples are prevalent on this page.  Those Gooden and Ripken cards have been part of this collection since I pulled them back in the 80's and they are wonderful.  That Dave Cochrane is also a favorite.  The "No Ink Additives Allowed!!!" is pure gold.  The odd warning and extra exclamation points make it almost surreal.  I pulled that card from a 1993 Ultra pack.  Also shown are some 1993 Ultra misprinted foil cards. 

On the back...

...you can see even more warnings on that Cochrane card (I wonder how many more there were on those Ultra cards?) and you can also see that it is Dave Schmidt that is the partner of that Dwight Gooden card.  Or is it Dwight Gooden who is the partner of the Dave Schmidt card?

We have a few more minor modern misprints and miscuts on this page.  My favorite is the early Upper Deck cards with extra and misplaced holograms.  Perhaps someone was trying to counterfeit those Paul Gibson and Torey Lovullo cards? Oh the humanity...

But wait?  What else is on this page?  Could it be miscut 1975 minis?  Indeed it is.  I have seen many of these over the years, I guess quality control was not high on the list of priorities for a test issue, and I kept a few for my collection.  The Al Oliver is cut almost so you can see how the set would have looked had the team name been on the bottom rather than the top. 

The backs...

...show more of the same.  That Higginson card is a separate card from the Sandberg card.  The Sandberg back is normal and the Higginson front is normal, so I display them back to back.  Same with the misprinted and miscut Zane Smith up there, it is a matching pair with the Dunston on the front.

Let's dive into some vintage miscuts...

...the 1975 Topps are probably my favorite for miscuts.  All the colors make for some very interesting pieces of modern card art.  Here you have a fine mishmash of horizontal and vertical; some extreme and some subtle. 

The backs of these...

...aren't quite as interesting as the fronts, to say the least.

Here are some more old school Topps miscuts:

That 1979 Garvey is a double print.  I wonder if the card next to it is also Garvey...alas, it is not quite over far enough to see.  I love the little stars on the borders of the miscut Grimsley Traded card there.  You see these on full sheets and I guess they were part of either the guide for the cutting machine or perhaps part of the printing process.  Alas, I don't know enough about the industry to know for sure.  I wonder why they never put rows of stars on the actual cards, they look kinda boss...

Backs...

...meh. Moving on.

You want 1973's?  We got 1973's.  I am not sure where I got so many miscut 1973 Topps cards, but I have a ton of them.  I have seen a ton of them.  I know 1973 was the first year they did a majority of the set in one series, I wonder if one has anything to do with the other?

Quick aside:  I once convinced a bunch of kids that Johnny Jeter was Derek Jeter's dad.  This was 1997 or 1998, before the internet was ubiquitous and could diffuse such a ruse.  I imagine there was a rush on his cards at local card shops for a week or so before the truth was revealed.  I don't know if I like messing with kids or Yankees fans more.

Backs...

...the backs show that the dotted lines are the edges of the sheet.  I prefer the stars.

1972 was not much better that 1973.  I have seen all form of miscut and misprinted 1972 cards. 

Hmmmm...wait, I think it is dotted lines on the bottom, stars on the sides.  Perhaps that is how the printer knew which end of the sheet was up?  I just noticed that for the first time...it all makes sense now. I am both supremely observant and an idiot.  A Cincinnati Reds fan once offered me $20 for that Bench miscut.  How do you price something that is unique, especially...

...since the back reveals it is attached to the boyhood photo of Bud Harrelson.  No way that card is ever leaving my collection.

Wow, and now some 1970 and 1971 Topps.  The early 70's were pretty terrible for quality control.

Nothing extreme in these cards, just some generally off center cards, all about the same amount.  I guess you can deduce that every once in a while, the sheets missed the cutter by about half an inch.

Wow, those 1970 cards sure look 100x brighter next to those 1971 backs.

Here is another favorite.  That 1968 Bernie Allen might be the worst diamond cut card I have ever seen.  Right behind it is that 1968 Steve Blass.  That Ken Berry is miscut and woefully out of register.  I have seen a bunch of 1968 Topps cards that are out of register (blurry to the layman).  I wonder if that was because of the burlap design. 

I have two of those 1967 Jack Baldschun cards, they are identically off center.  If anyone wants one, drop me a line, I will gladly send it to anyone who is as obsessed with miscut cards as I am...

Those diamond cut 68's are making me seasick.

I told you I have a lot of 1973 miscuts, here are some more.  Wait, that 1965 checklist looks fine...

...until you see the back...

...I like how some kid used it anyway.  I have seen a lot of 1962 Topps really off center, but not quite miscut.  That Wes Covington barely qualified, but the Mike Higgins shows that the wood border didn't go to the edges of the sheet.  I guess you gotta save on ink somehow.

Yup, I have some vintage Topps football miscuts too...

...tough being a Chiefs fan, huh?  That diamond cut Jim Marshall is oddly fitting, given his infamous claim to fame. 

Backs:

Here are some more modern football misprints and miscuts.  That quarter of a Giant was one of the cards as listed when I opened a pack of Pro Set back in the day.  I found that quite amusing and it has been amongst my error and miscut cards ever since. 

I have two of those Barry Sanders cards, once again, identical in off centered-ness, if anyone wants one.  As you can see, those two 1992 Topps cards aren't miscut...

They have blank backs.  And you may wonder why I have a completely blank card on this page.  Who cares about blank cards?  They use them as spacers all the time.  Well, that blank card came out of the same pack of 1992 Topps football cards as those blank back cards.  It is a completely blank card, not a spacer.  In my world, there is a difference.  I am not sure how that first series Star Wars miscut got in my collection (probably from my childhood), though I do have a bunch of diamond cut series four Star Wars cards.

OK, since I am just rambling here and showing everything in the damn binder, here are some more misprints:

Some more blank backs (the Franco, LaCock, Mills, and Curtis).  A few miscut backs only from 1975 and 1987.  The Rusty Kuntz does not have a 1979 Carew back, it is just a doubled up card.  The 1990 Leaf checklist with the inverted Sid Fernandez back is pretty cool, and if I had needed that checklist back in the day, it would have been pretty damn frustrating.

The backs...

...show the blank backs and a diamond cut Pudge that got thrown in there for some reason.  I should probably put that closer to the front where it belongs.

Since I have no finish, I'll try and bring it all the way back to the beginning with a few more cut cards I found but did not cut myself...

...those last three cards have all been trimmed to some extent or another.  The 1956 Smokey Burgess had its entire border excised so it would fit in a 9 pocket page I assume...where as the 1962 Gene Woodling was cut smaller for some odd reason I cannot quite figure out.  That last card is a 1955 Topps Double Header.  Well, it had its head cut off, so it is a single header, and really, since it has no head at all, I guess it is a no header.