#659

This card looks strange doesn't it? It is like a strange perspective piece. Where is he looking anyway?

I chose this one for two reasons. First, there was no better 659 and second to go on a rant. This card is what is known in the hobby as a short print. You see, back in the days when card collecting was actually supposed to be fun and not profitable, Topps printed the cards on a huge sheet, and then cut them to put in the packs. Since the sheet was a big rectangle, only so many cards could be on a sheet, so sometimes to make the numbers work, a particular card would be on the same sheet twice. This was known as a double printing because there were twice as many of these cards.

However, in certain years, instead of double printing, they would print some cards only on every other sheet, so there were half as many of these cards printed. These are known as short prints. They did it because they had to, not because they wanted to artificially inflate the value of certain cards like the cretin who buy and sell cards today.

Today, in the Wall Street climate of card collecting, card companies no longer need to print big sheets and cut them. So, there is no need for short prints right? Wrong.

Now, they do it on purpose. They purposely short print rookies and other desired cards, so that collectors need to buy more of what they don't want to get what they want. Due to this forced scarcity, the value of the cards on the secondary market is higher (which is what most collectors want anyway). However, the card manufacturers have to be laughing at these idiots who fork over $2.99 per pack at a chance to get an Evan Longoria short print, only to get their fourth Chone Figgins.