What do you do when you have a card of somebody who's been traded? That's easy if you're a kid, you grab a pen and write in the player's new team. But...what do you do if he changes teams again?
You fix it the same way.
With this Gene Oliver card, a previous owner felt it necessary to update his card without needing to wait until the following year. And who can blame him? back it those years, Topps was issuing their sets in several series per year and kids had no idea how long it would be before a certain player would show up in the set. I remember being 11, a year seemed like a really long time. For that reason, a pen would expedite the process nicely.
However, while checking out Baseball-Reference.com, I notice that Oliver's trade to the Red Sox happened after the 1967 season, so this card was likely unmarked until then. But two things pop up: first, he spent half a season with the Phillies after being traded straight up for Bob Uecker. Secondly, after half a season with Boston, he was sold to the Cubs, where he finished his career in 1969. Therefore, he never returned to the Braves like the card states. So the original owner not only missed the chance to show Oliver played for the Phillies and Cubs, he also was errant when he "updated" the card again.
Perhaps he missed reading the transactions in his local paper's sports section and wasn't reading The Sporting News. Or perhaps he felt bad and decided to make the card say what it said in the first place?
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