Favorites from Rectangle Man

As I mentioned previously, I had traded with Cory over at Rectangle Men. I sent off my 1976 Topps duplicates and he sent back a large stack of cards from 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites, a set that I have wanted to put together. Indeed, he sent me around 50 cards, a third of the set.  So, I am pretty far along with one bubble mailer.

I am not sure when I will get to working on the rest of the set.  I recently bought a 5 acre lot next to me and I have to do a large amount of work to make it safe to use a pasture. So, a fair amount of dinero will be going towards that for most of the rest of the year.  What little I have left for cards will probably go towards the vintage sets I have in process. Hopefully, this coming winter, I will loop back around and work on this.

In any case, I was trying to decide which cards to show (cuz that is what we do) and I decided to show those where I have the  actual vintage card it is based on and determine which I liked better.  But first there is something I want to get out of the way.

I understand that they don't want to issue an exact duplicate card. Thus, different pictures on the front.  But, I am not down with the way they chose to put career statistics on the back.  Specifically, I don't like that they chose to only show the players statistics with one team.  I would have preferred full career statistics.  Maybe it is just me, but I prefer to study the great players entire career.  But, that minor quibble aside, let's get to the cards!

In this case, I prefer the actual vintage card, the 1974 Hank Aaron Home Run King card, although it wasn't a fair comparison.  The 1974 version was probably the most valuable card I owned as a child collector and, thus, is still among my favorite cards of all time.  Sorry, modern Hank.

Two posed fake batting pictures.  Not a lot to diffferentiate them.  I guess I prefer the fake swing picture of the 2003 version to the fake waiting for a pitch picture of the 1977 version.

Toss up. Ole Bert is looking pretty creepy in both pictures, although the 2003 Bert is 1-2% less creepy.

I prefer the 2003 Mickey Rivers as he is wearing the home pinstripes and the photo os taken at Yankee Stadium rather than at Spring Training.

Have to give the nod to 1976 Fred Lynn since it is an action shot.

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2003 Craig Nettles wins versus 1976 although it was close.  The action shot is better than a posed shot in the home uniform.

Is it just me or does 1978 Jack Clark look a little bit like Tim Lincecum?  Anyways, 78 Clark gets the win here.  Posed batting pictures are kinda cliche, whereas posed fielding are somewhat novel.

So, I hope no one has been waiting a week in anticipation for this post.  It is pretty poor. Certainly, Cory's generosity deserves a better effort, but I am busier than a one armed paper hanger.  Work has been crazy and spring has finally arrived in force here and the yard work has multiplied exponentially since last weekend.  I am off to change the oil, filter, and blades on my lawnower.