Monday, July 18, 2016

Topps Screwed Up the Autograph

Yesterday this was one of the Five Random Cubs Cards, from 2012 Archives:


I wrote that the autograph was not the same as on the original card of Buckner's in 1982.

 

I wondered, why the difference?

There is also a certified autograph version of the Archives card and I have one.


This is Buckner's modern signature.  Similar to the 1982 version, but completely different from what was on the base archives card.

There were two different comments on the topic. Jim said, tongue in cheek, "Proof positive that it's been some Topps lackey signing these cards!"

Joe had a different take : "I once read a story about how the "Walt Disney" script logo was not based on Walt Disney's signature, so after enough people got upset with Walt that he wasn't signing his name "right", he had to learn to sign his name the way it appeared in the movies and TV shows.

...Which is a long-winded way of saying that I suspect that some athletes and celebrities have a legal signature and then they have an "autograph signature". If this is true of Buckner, then I would guess that one card shows his signature and the other his autograph."

Joe makes perfect sense....if it was any other company that we'd be dealing with.  But we're not.  We're talking Topps.

Want to know where the signature on Billy Buck's 2012 Archives card comes from?

 

The other Bill Buckner.....Billy Buckner.

You'd think that a company that makes baseball cards would have some baseball knowledge and know that there were different players with the same name.  And knowing that, would double-check to make sure that the correct signature was used.

You'd like to think that.

But you'd be wrong.

9 comments:

  1. Most times, when a person assumes something, they make an a$$ only of themselves and the person with whom they are dealing.

    When Topps assumes something, they make an a$$ of themselves and all of us too.

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  2. I used to have a boss who loved to overwork his employees. He'd come up with so many tasks that they were impossible to complete in a 24-hour day. I'd tell him there were only 24 hours in a day and such a large workload was causing errors to be made. He'd look at me blankly. That's Topps -- putting out so many sets they can't possibly get them all right, and causing errors to be made.

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  3. Well, you would also think they would be able to reproduce their own legacy product without major design omissions, or know the year of a rookie card of a superstar player, but they can't do those either.
    (see Heritage and Berger's Best Robin Yount).

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  4. Topps did this with Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza and minor league pitcher mike piazza

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  5. Nice catch. Topps really dropped the ball on mixing up the two Bills. Upper Deck did something similar a few years ago. I bought a Tony Gwynn Jr. card that had Sr's signature on it.

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  6. As soon as I read your subject line, I thought "They used the wrong Billy Buckner!" I would've looked a lot smarter if I'd had that epiphany 24 hours earlier...

    ...But I still wonder if players or celebrities have different signatures for fans and for legal documents.

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  7. Does anyone at Topps ever see these blog posts? I've read several of these types of proofreading posts, whether here or elsewhere, and nothing seems to be acknowledged or done. The ones that really got my attention were the 100 Years of Wrigley pieces Paul wrote about. Just seems to be routine for a company that holds a monopoly, with seemingly hundreds of willing opportunists, and the '24-hours-in-a-day' problems keep surfacing!

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