They went to the fourth annual Cubs Convention at the Hyatt Regency Hotel last weekend to rub elbows with beloved Cubs players, past and present, and to bend elbows with Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Caray. But 11 miles to the west, at the Hillside Holiday Inn, they came looking for “Fuck Face.”
Bill Ripken, brother of all-star Cal, son of former manager Cal Sr. Last year’s stats: .207 batting average, 106 hits, 2 home runs, 54 runs batted in. Without the obscenity, the Ripken card is what’s known in the trade as a “common,” worth about two cents, eight cents tops. When the news about the card broke, its value skyrocketed out of that ballpark. And the Cardboard Jungle has been in a furor ever since.
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Error cards are nothing new. That’s a picture of Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo printed on Topps’s 1963 Don Landrum card. But while errors on the field can be costly to a baseball team, errors on a baseball card can be profitable for the collector. The 1982 Fleer card showing Saint Louis pitcher John Littlefield as a right-hander is worth about eight cents. The error card depicting him as a left-hander has sold for more than $65.
We may never know, and the mystery has fueled the card’s chutes-and-ladders progress–$20, $50, more than $100 on the east coast, then down to $45. Dealers are understandably stymied. “It’s the most erratic item we have ever carried,” said Ken Goldin, vice president of the Scoreboard, Inc. in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. “There is nothing close in comparison. It rises and falls hourly. We had over 50 calls a day when the story broke. Finally, we just started answering the phones ‘We have no Fleer card packs and Billy Ripken is $75.’ Everyone knew what we were talking about. Not one person said, ‘Huh?’”
And yes, it takes luck. Kent, 33, a Chicago lawyer, was idly browsing for cards to complete his 1963 and 1966 Topps sets. Kent wasn’t too interested in the Ripken card, but when a collector took him aside and offered to sell him a box of Fleer cards for only $27, how could he refuse? In the fifth pack, he found his Ripken. “I’ve got it,” he said calmly. “Now I’m a yuppie.”
Initial speculation about the value of the card is, in retrospect, charmingly naive. Wrote one columnist in Sports Collectors Digest, “Undoubtably, some collectors will want to have copies of the card just to giggle at.”
“My dad’s favorite player was Mickey Mantle,” said one 14-year-old. “He had a lot of Mantles, rookie cards, just because he was his favorite player. My grandma threw them out. Today they would be worth thousands.”
