Player Collecting the Easy Way #3

When I headlined a post recently with an Al Kaline RC reprint, I knew it was time to get crackin' on assembling my first display of Al Kaline cards.

The Card That Started It All

2003 Fleer Flair Greats

I pulled that one from some repack product, out of the blue, over 10 years ago now. At that time I hadn't thought of the idea of collecting just a few cards of a player, rather than diving into the deep end of a Player Collection pool concept and starting out with a goal of collecting all of a player's cards.

But I didn't know what to do with that card aside from placing it in my box of Tigers cards. I didn't have any 1950s Tigers cards, where this picture seems to have originated. But I knew I wanted to keep it. When I looked up it's lineage, some definite cheese on the part of Fleer appeared as they had used this same image in a 2002 product called Greats of the Game, on a much cleaner and thus more appealing design. That is only a 100 card checklist that I knew would be enjoyable to collect, but has to be done one card at a time as the original box&packs when it was issued featured one on-card autograph of a Hall-of-Famer per box, placing that firmly in the too-many-Benjamins for me category. If I ever run across a lot of the base cards from that product I could see launching an enjoyable collecting effort from it.

That pleasant daydream would still leave this 2003 Flair Greats re-run quite well orphaned, however. So here on this dreary last Sunday of 2024 I am finally giving the card a proper place in my collection, along with these:

1994 Topps 1954 reprint

One thing I particularly like about that card is that it is slowly but surely increasing my motivation to consider collecting the previous year's reprint of 1953 Topps, though I will have to check out some singles from it first to make sure there isn't a too simple (i.e., blurry) "re" in the "print." Some reprint efforts are better than others, from what I have seen; but I now have several cards from this 1994 version of '54 Topps and they are just exactly perfect for a simple binder page construction project.

2010 Topps Turkey Red "Boxer frame" insert

2019 Topps Archives 1975

Kaline does not quite have a card in 1975 Topps; though he is featured on a Highlights card at the start of the set for reaching the 3,000 Hits milestone at the end of the 1974 season, after which he retired. 

So this was a mostly pleasing inclusion in 2019 Archives; I like how you can see the color of Al's eyes on this one. The '75 style cards in that release had one of Topps seemingly standard go-tos of applying a digital filter to the source images for the cards, which detracted from the enjoyment of the card for most of the 20th century players, and some of the contemporary ones as well. Fortunately that filter seems to not bother this card, at all.

Given that 1974 was Kaline's final year of play one would think that a '75 style card for him would be the perfect place to print his complete career stats, but Topps punted on that idea, even though 1975 cards for a Kaline contemporary such as Hank Aaron didn't cut the stats short.

1972 Topps

Such a pleasant card; Mr. Tiger just chillin' during practice. I like the glove just casually waiting for some activity. 

I do not know which of the 11 other 1971 AL ballparks might be shown here though several can be eliminated from consideration upon first glance. That will be an enjoyable little research project some other dreary winter day in my future.

2019 Topps Stadium Club

Quite a departure from classical Baseball Cards though I don't think this is the first such card Topps had ever made. Kaline remained on friendly terms with Topps in the 2010s and new Kaline cards appeared routinely.

2011 Topps Lineage

2023 Topps Heritage insert

In original Topps, the Highlights appear in the next year's set. In Heritage, they appear with the set of the Topps Baseball style being celebrated.

That card certainly does show Kaline's age, appropriately enough, although that is not a photo from Baltimore on Sept. 24th, 1974 - home uniform in this one. So, close enough I guess, as is this next image -

2014 Topps Update Fond Farewells insert

I normally don't care for inserts clearly designed to show off a "relic" inclusion but then still needing a non-relic version to place in packs. But this one does have a nice enough foil repro of the Tigers logo, and I for some reason like that the card designer drew in the batter's boxes on each side of Home Plate for a touch of authenticity.

That photo might actually be from a post-retirement appearance by Kaline, it appears to me; he remained employed by the Tigers throughout his entire life.

Card Most on the Bubble: Surprisingly enough, that would probably be the excellent 1972 Topps card. But that's because I would rather include that in a nice run of Kaline cards, starting backwards from his 1975 Highlights card, which would be a nice affordable look at the final third of his career.

I also look forward to assembling some pairs of cards featuring Kaline and George Kell, his TV broadcast partner for many years. 

And I also hope to come across a post-retirement card for Kaline that prints all of his stats, from 1953 to 1974, a probably not-overly-difficult project I haven't dived into yet.

The Result