C.A.: 1975 Hostess Milt May

(It's halfway through December and I've managed to add only 16 cards to my collection this month according to TCDB. I haven't added less than 300 cards in any month out of the year. Christmas better come through! Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 346th in a series):

This is an error card that doesn't seem to get much attention in the history of error cards. Although I have a feeling if this card came out in the 1980s, everyone would be all about it.

1970s fans know right away what the error is. That is NOT Milt May. Milt May, for the uninitiated, was a fairly good-hitting catcher. He was also a white ball player. The photo is of Lee May, a black slugging first baseman.

It's fairly obvious once you examine all the details that this particular card was intended for Milt May and not Lee May. The other tip-offs:

The back of the same card, No. 35, contains nothing but Milt May information, all his correct vitals and statistics and, oh yeah, his full name.

The other tip-off:

There is an actual card (or another card) of Lee May in the set at card No. 142. It's an obvious airbrush job (Lee May was traded from the Astros to the Orioles in the 1974 offseason) and the photo session was probably the same day, maybe even at the same moment, as the photo on the Milt May card. Both feature the same barren Houston spring training background.

It's wild that Lee May has a better photo in the '75 Hostess set on a card that is not his.

So with all that known, I can only conclude that someone really goofed and slapped a photo of Lee May on Milt May's card. Milt May doesn't even show up in the '75 Hostess set, but his statistics do!

 

From a personal collecting standpoint, I'm a bit disappointed that I never saw the 1975 Hostess set when I was a kid. My first knowledge of Hostess cards was the 1977 edition. If I had collected Hostess cards in 1975 and pulled the Milt May-Lee May card, I would know right away that it was incorrect, because I owned the mini version of the 1975 Topps Milt May card that year.

Even clueless little night owl, pretty oblivious to inaccuracies on cards at the time, would have caught that. And I would have discovered error cards a full four years before my first experience with error cards, which was the famed 1979 Topps Bump Wills Rangers-Blue Jays error.

My guess is that the Lee May-Milt May Hostess error isn't highly mentioned because:

1. It happened in the 1970s before the error craze hit.

2. A corrected version was never released

3. It's an oddball card and some collectors are automatically dismissive of oddballs, especially at the time.

But the error is pretty egregious, like one of the worst ever.

 

 But also really, really cool for this collector.