Topps cards with player on wrong team
 

I noticed this 1980 Topps Dock Ellis which shows him as a member of the Mets. Ellis went to the Pirates in Sept 1979 and appeared in a few games with them.

So he should be a Pirate in the 1980 set. Are there others like this?

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...llisdo01.shtml

https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=28560

A lot of the Topps Traded or Update sets have depicted players on their new teams compared to the card in the base set

This one got corrected before publication :-}

https://oi1267.photobucket.com/album...539/img088.jpg

I guess Topps finalized the front of the Dock Ellis card even before the previous season ended. I remember there being another card like that. Maybe the 1980 Richie Zisk? Regardless, it was pretty lame of Topps to be so lazy.

OK. It wasn't Richie Zisk, but there is another one out there.

Didnt the 1980 cards come out Sept of 79?

I always thought it was the fall of the prior year

Topps was very lazy. The text on the backs of the 1980 cards gave season highlights for the 1978 season for nearly all of the players. It's like 1979 did not exist. Competition from other companies was welcome in 1981.

It took till the 21st century -- maybe 2003 or 4 for the next year Topps cards to come out in the fall. Circa 1980 you had to wait till March for the release for the most part IIRC.

Rich

Do team cards count?

Not really because team photos can be taken at any point in the year.

I'm really interested to see if any other players finished the season with one team and is shown as a member of their previous team such as the Dock Ellis example.

Can he really be the only one?

I knew there was another. It's the 1980 Topps Ralph Garr. The front lists him with the White Sox, but the back shows his stats from 1979 with the Angels. O-Pee-Chee correctecd the error.

1988 Doug DeCinces shown as an Angel after ending season with Cardinals. Topps, Sportflics, and Score has him as an Angel, only Fleer got it right.

https://www.comc.com/Cards,so,i100,=1988+doug+decinces

Actually this is the only 1988 card of Decinces showing him with the correct team:
https://baseballcardsinjapan.blogspo...-set-doug.html

The 1988 Topps DeCinces at least states he is "Now with Cardinals".

Ellis isn't in the 1980 OPC set so they couldn't make the correction.

The Garr and DeCinces have a statement under the stat box stating date acquired instead of in the bio block. Ellis' acquisition appears only in his bio block.

Is it safe to say that Topps would build the card fronts before the previous season ended? It appears they had the design then too.

Any more occurrences?

How about if the team pic was taken many years apart? How about the same player pictured on 2 team cards in a year where they play for niether team? How about a team card that the player was no longer in MLB for a couple seasons yet appears on a team card?

Not really looking at those, just their base card.

I'm curious though, what do you have?