Charlies and Charleys
September 30th, 2009 | Published in Autographs, error cards
A common error on vintage football cards was spelling a player’s name Charlie when he spelled it Charley, or spelling it Charley when he spelled it Charlie. I don’t know how the guys named Charles chose which spelling to use, but it appears that the card companies just flipped a coin. And as you can see on the back of the 1966 Philadelphia Charley Taylor card shown here, sometimes they used both!
My Beckett catalog identifies most cards with errors, including Charlie/Charley errors. Unfortunately, it appears that Beckett got some wrong, too. (My catalog is from 2005, but I’ll bet this hasn’t changed.) Charley Johnson’s name, it says, is spelled Charlie, and Charlie King’s name, it says, is spelled Charley. The players’ own signatures, though, show that my Beckett is wrong. Shown here is Charley Johnson’s autograph on a 1967 Philadelphia card and Charlie King’s fascimile signature on his 1969 Tresler Comet Bengals card.
With my Beckett proving unreliable, I turned instead to pro-football-reference.com to help with the Charlie/Charley discrepancies. That site had both Johnson and King correct, and I have found it reliable for all other information, as well.
Following are links to the Charlie/Charley misspellings I have identified in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. It is possible that I missed some, so if you find another, leave a comment or drop me a line.
