In my quest to find a football product that I like and might be willing to cannonball into, I bought a rack pack of Topps Kickoff 2008 and, wouldn't you know it, I pulled my first ever football autograph. This is of Broncos draft pick Anthony Aldridge and I really love the autograph. It is simple, a little messy, but also nearly an anarchy symbol. My scan also doesn't do the card justice as it is a beautiful silver color when light is not pointed directly at it.
But after digging into the stats of Mr. Aldridge I come to find there is no player by that name in the NFL. So I asked myself, "Have I stumbled upon the football version of the Kazuo Uzuki card? Is that what's behind that odd signature?
But before shooting off that blog post and demanding Topps to answer for their crimes, I went to the Broncos roster and found that there is an Anthony Alridge [minus the "D"] on the reserve squad who is a rookie running back. So in the end this is just an error card but in truth it points to the importance of ON CARD AUTOGRAPHS! You would think that over the course of signing a few hundred cards Mr. Alridge would have said to the "Topps Representative" eagerly watching the signing, "Hey, you spelled my name wrong jackass." The presses [or magic card machines...whatever they are using today] could have been stopped, mistakes fixed, and error cards avoided.
But I am getting the feeling that the card industry is a lot like this scene from Fight Club:
Topps Representative: "Should we [Topps] initiate a recall of a card? Take the number of cards out in the field, multiply by the probably rate of error cards, then multiply the result by the average amount of rage churned out by baseball card bloggers who pull error cards. A x B x C = X and if X is less than the cost of a card recall then we don't do them.
Average Joe: "Are there a lot of these types of error cards?"
Topps Representative: "You wouldn't believe."
Average Joe: "Which card company do you work for?"
Topps Representative: "A major one."
My fake Topps Boycott continues on!
But after digging into the stats of Mr. Aldridge I come to find there is no player by that name in the NFL. So I asked myself, "Have I stumbled upon the football version of the Kazuo Uzuki card? Is that what's behind that odd signature?But before shooting off that blog post and demanding Topps to answer for their crimes, I went to the Broncos roster and found that there is an Anthony Alridge [minus the "D"] on the reserve squad who is a rookie running back. So in the end this is just an error card but in truth it points to the importance of ON CARD AUTOGRAPHS! You would think that over the course of signing a few hundred cards Mr. Alridge would have said to the "Topps Representative" eagerly watching the signing, "Hey, you spelled my name wrong jackass." The presses [or magic card machines...whatever they are using today] could have been stopped, mistakes fixed, and error cards avoided.
But I am getting the feeling that the card industry is a lot like this scene from Fight Club:
Topps Representative: "Should we [Topps] initiate a recall of a card? Take the number of cards out in the field, multiply by the probably rate of error cards, then multiply the result by the average amount of rage churned out by baseball card bloggers who pull error cards. A x B x C = X and if X is less than the cost of a card recall then we don't do them.
Average Joe: "Are there a lot of these types of error cards?"
Topps Representative: "You wouldn't believe."
Average Joe: "Which card company do you work for?"
Topps Representative: "A major one."
My fake Topps Boycott continues on!
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