The 1975 Fred Lynn rookie was a hot card when I was 12 years old due to the white splotch on it. We all kept opening packs hoping to find one without the splotch, but never did.

Then to keep it interesting Topps did a 1990 Turn back the clock, and 2001 Archive card using the same picture, but it still had the splotch on it.

I wonder if the original exists in the Topps Vault without the defect?

At first glance I assumed it was just his arm

After about forty years of seeing that card and owning one I never noticed that whited out area. Is it possibly a crude Topps airbrushing out of his Pawtucket minor league uniform he was wearing?

I assumed the same. It always appeared to me to be an image of him wearing a really baggy uniform and posing in an awkward position. It appeared to me that he was resting his arms on something shoulder high and looking back at the camera, almost like Rich Hebner on his 78 Topps card


More likely, as Cliff mentions, a poor airbrushing job.

Airbrushing
 

What exactly is airbrushing anyway ?

Cliff that would make some sense except he has the Boston cap ?

This might be stretching it, but I am going with the theory that someone at Topps turned the fancy P on his Pawtucket cap into a fancy B for a Red Sox emblem with airbrushing. Maybe I better quit while I am behind :o.

I was kind of serious about the airbrushing question. It seems that term covers a lot of stuff Topps may have done to cards

I think your theory is as good as any. If so they did a better job on his B than on the Popovich card previously :-)

Looks like I was off on the 1974 Pawtucket fancy P theory, they used a plain P hat back then. I did find another photo though, it looks like that white area may actually be his uniform. ETA, I will go back to my original theory that Topps airbrushed the Pawtucket cap and uniform (pretty good on the cap, crudely on the uniform) to make it look like a Red Sox uniform. It looks like an airbrush artist touched up the uniform for the 1982 Kmart card and greatly improved the appearance.

Maybe the Kmart card is why I felt he was leaning against something shoulder high....really bad that I completely forgot about one of the most overproduced cards of all time(at least from the early 80s). I wonder why the 82 Kmart card's image was not used on the 90TBC card?

1952 Topps 280 Boyer
 

Not sure if this has been noted before or not, but I noticed this recurring red line on the bottom edge of this 52 280 Boyer card. Are there other 52s with similar red lines on other 52s (including the card below the 280 card on an original sheet)?