Back in 2007, Michael Vick was fresh off a conviction for dogfighting. It was a black eye for both the league and the Falcons, and many people were not wanting to ever see his face back in football ever again. Around the same time, many products were in the final stages of completion, and that same bunch needed to be adjusted to leave Vick off the checklist. One product was 2007 Topps Chrome, and Topps did everything in their power to pull him out of every last pack.

As the story goes with most of these situations, they almost succeeded, save a few Hobby packs and a few retail packs. This obviously made the card INCREDIBLY valuable, especially for set collectors, driving the price ridiculously high. This was all in spite of his crimes, and was very interesting to see how collectors reacted. Even now, the card maintains its value, especially after Vick’s incredible 2010 seaosn.

Here are some examples (only 2 on eBay):

2007 Michael Vick Topps Chrome “Unreleased” Card

2007 Michael Vick Topps Chrome “Unreleased” Card 2

A similar situation happened with Royals’ infielder, Alex Gordon, the year before, as Topps accidentally produced and packed out cards of him prior to him being eligible for being on a card. As a result, Topps had to pull back the cards from seeding the packs, and actually cut the picture out of the card itself before re-inserting it. This lead to cards with holes in them being released into packs, and many collectors were left dumbfounded. The card is still very valuable considering that Gordon’s career has not necessarily panned out, and from what you can tell, it has everything to do with rarity. In fact, the ones that were left whole are worth more than the cut outs in most cases.

Here are some examples of this one:

2006 Alex Gordon Topps Cut Out BGS 9.5

2006 Alex Gordon Topps NON-cut out PSA 9

2006 Alex Gordon Topps NON-cut out 2

The last one I want to mention is probably the most famous, as again, Fleer had made a mistake with a card being released that shouldnt have been. This time, Billy Ripken took his photo with “Fuck Face” written on the barrel of his bat, and it was not edited out prior to the printing of some of the cards. It was later corrected with a big black box over it, or it being whited out, but the originals still carry value long after Ripken’s career was over.

Check it out:

1989 Billy Ripken Fuck Face Error BGS 9.5

1989 Billy Ripken Fuck Face Error 2

1989 Billy Ripken Fuck Face Error 100 card lot

Moral of the story is that mistakes are often good things for collectors rather than bad things, and I think its funny to revisit these oversights, rather than the forced “mistakes” that are purposefully done in products these days.

It still shocks me how much some of them are worth, especially the ones from when sets were not short printed at all.