Beware of certain eBay 2011 Topps Heritage Short Print Auctions. Not all error cards are short prints.

We reported on seeing the first 2011 Topps Heritage mirrored Alex Rodriguez card soon after it hit eBay.  From a looking around at the boards, we just might have been the first site to point this out.   Now we are starting to notice a bunch of other cards cropping up on eBay, claiming to be short prints.  Instead of concentrating on those that could be, we would like to point out the ones that are not.

I love it when an eBay seller puts a question mark after the reason they want to charge you a premium.  In answer to this question, no, it is not a super short print.  It's not even a short print.

The seller is asking for a super short print premium because this San Diego Padres team card has the stats for the Cleveland Indians on the back.  Let's take a look at my Padres Team Card

By the way, I have two Padres team cards and they both have Shin-Soo Choo as the batting leader and Cleveland Indian stats.   So either I am one extremely lucky collector or this is the regular base card. Now whether the card is a Topps mistake or is an homage to card 22 of the 1962 set, a checklist that jumped from 31 on the front to 121 on the back remains to be seen.

Some auctions are trying to sell this card as a red tint short print which makes sense because all the other team cards have a yellow backgrounds like the Padres card above.  But take a look at the same numbered card from the 1962 Topps set that happens also to be the White Sox team card.

Not looking so red tinted now, is it?   Now technically the 2011 card, which is number 113, does fall within the "tinting zone."  Mimicking cards 110 to 196 of the 1962 set that were "green tinted" during the first printing, the 2011 Heritage set has tinted variations in Green (general release available everywhere) Red (Target exclusive) and Blue (WalMart exclusive)  for cards 110 to 196.  I just don't know how you can tell if a red based card has been red tinted.  This one is definitely a buy at your own risk proposition.

For comparison here are Luke Scott's cards in all variations of tints, no tint, red, green and blue tints.

Regular Base                                          Target Red

 Green Tint                                               WalMart Blue 

When ever you are in doubt about a 2011 Topps Heritage card, try to look up the same numbered card from the 1962 Topps set.  Cards that appear to be errors most likely are just reproductions of the same error from the 1962 set like this one.