The last two days I have
done Star Wars related posts so I decided to make it a trilogy with today’s
post, as suggested by Fuji, and I am going with the famous C-3PO golden rod
error card. This is one of my Top 10 Wants cards that I recently picked
up.
The card is from the
1977 Topps Star Wars Series 4 (Green) release and is card #207, which depicts a
scene of C-3PO (Anthony Davis). Now the scene itself is nothing special but
what made this card collectible is the additional “unit” that C-3PO is sporting
making him look more like a porn star than a human-cyborg relations protocol
droid.
There have been a couple
of explanations, that seem reasonable when considered, as to why C-3PO appears
to have an erection. Some claim it was a disgruntled Topps employee but Topps
has been clear that the image came directly from LucasFilms, and contact sheets
show that the original image sent to Topps does contain the shot of C-3PO
packing so Topps is off the hook. LucasFilms responded by stating it was just a
case of bad timing and that when the picture was taken a piece of the C-3PO
costume was falling and just happened to be a case of “Whoops” and not noticed
when the image was sent to Topps.
But we may finally have
an answer from author Gary Gerani in his recently released book Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume One. In the book, which is dedicated to Topps Star Wars
trading cards, Gerani (Who worked for Topps at the time) states that he was on
the set while the movie was being filmed and one day the employees of the
LucasFilms costume department were screwing around and gave C-3PO the extra
equipment and taking pictures and somehow one of the pictures was included in the
contact sheets sent to Topps.
Considering
that Gary Gerani worked for Topps at the time and was present on the movie set during
the filming of Episode IV and has nothing to gain by making this claim (His
book would have sold no matter what he said about the card) I am apt to believe
him.
Topps
eventually airbrushed out the unit and re-released the card. There has never
been an announcement as to how many of the error card and corrected card were
released but it is believed that the corrected clean version of the card may
actually be more limited than the X-rated version.
The
prices of the individual cards can vary greatly, I have seen some of the
corrected versions sell for anywhere from $8-10 up to $25-30 for ungraded
versions while the Golden Rod version running from $20-25 up to $100 for
ungraded versions. I picked up both of the cards in one purchase and while they
are not pristine cards they are in reasonable condition but with slight paper separation
at the corners, the corrected version is significantly off-center and the coloring is not as brilliant as the Golden Rod version.
