- Official Card Set Name and Card Number: 1991 Topps #337.
- Player Name, position, team: Keith Comstock, pitcher, Seattle Mariners.
- Major League Debut: April 3, 1984.
- Last Line of Statistics: 1990 stats (Mariners): 60 G, 56 IP, 7-4, 22 R, 18 ER, 50 SO, 26 BB, 0 GS, 0 CG, 0 SHO, 2 SV, 2.89 ERA.
- Any special information about player: Drafted by the Angels #5th, June 1976. Signed by the Mariners as a Free Agent 06/21/1989. Bats: left, Throws: left.
- Any special information about this specific card: Comstock's second regular and final Topps card (total includes regular and traded cards only). I have a confession to make. Back in 1990, my mom found out that one of her childhood friends actually worked for the Topps Company. After telling her friend that I collected baseball cards, I received a ton of stuff (don't ask me where it all went...). Some time before the end of the year, after we had settled into our new home, a package came in the mail from my mother's friend. Inside was a complete 1991 Topps baseball set, before the cards were even available to the public. Needless to say, I was extremely excited. I went over the cards and one of the first things I noticed, other than the Bill Schroeder card was really bent (you know, even though I bought more cards, I never really replaced it), was the Keith Comstock card. Here he is, pitching for the Mariners, you can even see the Yellow "S" on the cap, and what team is he affiliated with???
That's right, the Cubs. It turns out that this was not the only error card in the set. In fact, perusing the big Beckett book, there are, not counting the uncorrected ones, 28 error cards in this set. These errors consisted of wrong players on the card (see Jose Gonzalez #279 and Wes Chamberlain #603) to spelling or statistical errors. Even the checklists had errors on them. Guess who has all of the error cards??? (raises hand sheepishly). Back to Keith Comstock. Ironically, his only other Topps card (from 1988) was also an error card that was eventually corrected (white letters on "Padres" was changed to blue to match the other Padres cards), at least Topps had the right team then. I'll be honest, years after knowing that the 1991 Comstock card was corrected, I never, EVER, saw one with a Mariners logo. All the cards I had seen were the ones with the Cubs on it. I never bought a factory set (why would I need to...I already got the set!!!), so I can only imagine that's probably why. So I thank the Baseball Card Cyber Museum and Joe McAnally for the scan. - Beckett value: $0.08-$0.25 (error), $0.01-$0.05 (corrected)
- How many cards of this player do I own?: 2 cards.
Sincerely,
JayBee Anama
Keith would refuse to sign the white letter one. He said we were trying to increase the value of the card. I really just wanted the signature and it was the only card I had of him.
ReplyDeleteCool story!!
ReplyDeleteI'm proud to say I also have the 1991 error cards (though I thought it was only 27, so conveniently 3 extra pages in my binder). I thought some of the photo selections -- Clemens, Boggs, Fisk -- were great, and I loved the use of the "real" team name/logos. (No, not a Bosox fan, but maybe the photo chooser at Topps was. . . .)
ReplyDeleteI have 5 of his cards for a total BV of 30 cents. Wow. http://basballcardsrule.blogspot.com/
ReplyDelete