turn back the clock to cards that didn't exist

i posted about a month ago about the cards that were my favorite back in 1987. they were both 'turn back the clock' cards from the topps set that year, which is reflective of both the lack of diversity in collecting options and the reduced amount of cards i was buying then.

anyway, one of the cards was the maury wills card that featured his 1962 style card.

of course, that card did not exist in 1962 thanks to wills' refusal to sign with topps.  i first learned that it wasn't an actual card sometime in 1982 after buying the kmart mvp box set while on a big box retail visit with my grandma.  thanks to it being a 20th anniversary set, the 1962 mvps were included, and that meant maury wills got a card:

meanwhile, my dad was collecting dodger team sets of the 1960's and we eventually discovered that wills was not part of the 1962 topps set. this was later confirmed with our local card and comic shop owner who knew more about these things.  

as a result, i realized that the 1975 topps 1962 mvp card that was still on my team collection want list at the time also featured a card that should have been or never was or however you want to name it

i believe that was the first time that topps used that card image, and it may be one of the first such cards they created i suppose.

it wasn't the first, however, because in that same subset there was a 1951 topps roy campanella card created

as well as a 1955 topps campanella card

complete with an erroneously placed la dodger hat instead of a brooklyn dodger one.

this discovery gave me hope that there might one day be a 1978 topps brooks robinson or 1977 hank aaron or 1975 al kaline card created to fill the final tribute holes left behind.  and, even though the all-time fan favorites sets of the early 2000s and the current archives releases gave and continue to give me hope, i'm still waiting on brooks and aaron cards.

a few years after learning about the maury wills card in 1982, i found another one.

when i first saw the fernando valenzuela turn back the clock card in a 1986 topps pack, i was happy as he and the dodgers certainly defined the 1981 season for me. good job topps! when i went to put it in my dodger topps team set binder, however, i was reminded that his 1981 topps traded card featured a slightly different photo.

it's from the same photo shoot, so you can see how i assumed it was the same image at first.  at the time, i thought that topps did this on purpose for some reason, but these days i wonder if they erroneously used a mockup from 1981 without checking to confirm it was the actual card produced.

last year, i was happy to see topps bring back the 'turn back the clock' cards even though they weren't done in a 'card within a card' style that had been the norm for these sets when they appeared post-1977. i actually preferred the use of new photographs that tied to the event on the card, and besides, there weren't topps card designs that would have fit such events that took place prior to 1951.  still, i would like to see more of the 'lost cards' from topps, like the '62 wills and the two campy cards. maybe 2021 archives will afford topps an opportunity to create a card that should have been.