How to spot 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball Error Cards

With 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball releasing next week, collectors will be opening packs trying to find the error cards that mimic and parallel the errors made in the 1966 Topps Baseball release. Because these new Heritage error cards are unannounced, the hardest part, most of the time, is spotting them.

I was the first to spot one of these cards back in 2011. I did a post about it called Mysterious ARod 2011 Topps Heritage Card Surfaces on eBay. At the time the card was on its way to being sold for a little more than $10. That auction ended early. When it was understood to be an error mimic card it sold for more than $300.

So rather than wait until after the release of 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball, we have decided to provide for you a guide with a checklist of cards that could contain errors.  We've divided them into four categories, Hight Alert for cards that are almost guaranteed to have error variations, Possible Errors for cards that look like good candidates for error SSP cards, Longshots for cards that have an outside chance of being included as an SP and Conditional Longshots for cards that could have an error variation but depend on certain elements being present.

All of this is based on what we know about the original error cards from 1966, what we know about the 2015 Topps Heritage Checklist and how previous releases of Heritage have handled errors. Until these cards are discovered and confirmed, check these card numbers very carefully.

1966 Topps Baseball Error Cards Visual Checklist

It’s Free Dress Friday here on All About Cards. That means anything goes. So put on your casual clothes and let’s look at the lighter side of Trading Cards.

In the past two weeks when we introduced you to “Actual” Error Cards. Not player cards that contain errors but cards that contain player’s errors. We received some great feedback on that post, but it might be time to look at some real error cards. Yes, the ones that contain card errors.  

With 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball releasing next week, collectors will be looking at cards in the style of 1966 Topps Baseball. One really fun aspect of Heritage from year to year is discovering the unannounced error cards. These cards are SSPs and mimic the error cards from the year Heritage is honoring. Because these cards are unannounced, collectors slowly find these cards as packs are opened. 

The hardest part, most of the time, is spotting them. Many people race to get their cards up on eBay to try to take advantage of higher sales prices for being first to market. With Heritage this can be a costly error as some cards sell for the price of their normal base card counterparts.

I was the first to spot one of these cards back in 2011. I did a post about it called Mysterious ARod 2011 Topps Heritage Card Surfaces on eBay. At the time the card was on its way to being sold for a little more than $10. That auction was eventually ended early. When it was understood to be an error mimic card it sold for more than $300.

So for Free Dress Friday we will focus on the original errors from 1966. Later today I’ll give you my predictions for which cards will be error cards in 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball. (I got over 80% of them last time.) All of this will be followed up with a Complete Checklist for 2015 Topps Heritage Baseball this weekend and Complete Visual Checklists for the Throwback Uniform, Action Image, Color Swap and Error Mimic variations shortly after next week’s release.

Now let’s look at the original errors from 1966 Topps Baseball.