So, some cards arrived from Zach of Autographed Cards just the other day. He told me he had a few of the 2003 Fan Favorites cards on my list and shipped them off.
The Kent Tekulve is the highlight, of course. Believe me, fellow Teke fans who may not have been old enough to see him at his height, we were baffled that this guy was actually getting real major leaguers out.
Here are the rest that Zach sent. These five get me down to six to complete the set, and then I would have all three Fan Favorites sets finished off. That would be a nice point of pride in my collection, something that the current Archives product could never hope to match.
Zach sent two other cards that I didn't expect.
It seems he got suckered into buying the 65th anniversary Archives product at Walmart, too. And he unearthed two Dodgers in his box.
One was a Koufax rookie replica. How weird is it to see a 1975 Topps back on the reverse of a 1955 Topps card?
The other card is another one everyone knows and has seen a few times.
Topps has beaten Jackie Robinson's 1952 Topps card to death, brought it back to life, killed it again, reincarnated it as a glossy form of its former self, murdered it a few more times, and -- HELLO! -- here it is alive once more!
In fact, it is the second reprint version of Robinson's '52 card that Topps has issued this year (as far as I know). Back when I pulled the first one, I mentioned how close I was to putting together a full page of 1952 Robinson reprints.
Others rooted me on. And hoped Topps was so impressed with itself that it would create more:
I never thought I'd get a complete page together before the end of the year, either, but we all know how often Topps dredges up the past.
Behold:
This is as close as I'm going to get to Andy Warhol's soup cans.
A week or two ago, I figured out how many Jackie Robinson cards I owned. It was around 230. Two of them were issued during his playing career. Nearly 190 of them were issued since 2000. That's what's allowing me to do stuff like this.
But the page -- made up of cards from 1997, 2001, 2002, 2011, 2013 and 2016 -- I admit is pretty mesmerizing. My OCD would never allow me to take these out of their proper year in my binders, but if I were to get duplicates .... (pay no attention to that, it is the madness talking).
Those are the backs, just to really let you know they aren't really the same card.
I also know these aren't all the '52 Robinson reprints. There is one from 1983 and I apparently lost the one from the 1995 reprint sent. Can't find it nowhere.
This page also either keeps my mind off the fact -- or beats me over the head with it -- that I don't own the actual '52 Robinson. I just did a completed listings search on ebay for the card (until I ran out of interest/got depressed) and the average price came to close to $4,000. There are definitely some options out there that would work if I set my mind to it, but then you have to consider fakes and all that nonsense.
Reprints became ridiculous several years ago. Nobody needs a reprint of an Evan Longoria card. But I've seen the point of reprints of golden oldie cards ever since I was looking through the Larry Fritsch Cards catalog as a teenager and noticing their reprints of old Goudey cards and stuff.
Whether anyone needs nine reprints of the same card (but ... but .... but ... shiny and different backs!) is up to the individual.
In this case, it gave me a chance to mention Warhol, so I'll give it a pass.
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