Repeats? Oh, yes. Nifty Nine #14

Baseball Card collectors often find that they have seen the picture on their brand new Baseball Picture Card somewhere, before — usually on another Baseball Picture product of some sort.

Instead of complaining, I recently decided to just go with a flow on this...

The Card That Started It All

2011 Topps Baseball Wal-Mart Hanger box exclusive insert

This wasn't quite the card that started it all, but was the first card I obtained for this project. I didn't dream this one up until some years later:

2018 Big League

I enjoyed the debut set from the Big League product quite a bit; I almost completed it but the grey border ultimately dissuaded me from that in favor of just some pages of highlights, one of which is a classy page of "All-Time Greats" on this classically understated design. But since I had a duplicate of Hammerin' Hank, I had to decide just what to do with the extra slice of Baseball Card perfection.

So I decided to just start putting Hank Aaron cards into my "Players" box to see what happens on the way to a low key 9 card Player collection page -

2020 Topps A Numbers Game insert

I got off to a bad start with these particular inserts; it took me a few more seasons of laughing at the absurdities of 2020 Update to realize just how much I liked Uni # cards. I will be collecting this one - a simple enough task for a high print-run insert checklist with zero Rookies on it - probably during the next Black Friday week on COMC.

In the mean-time when this great #44 card went into the Players box, that particular alphabetical sort had another 2011 card in the stack with it, waiting for entry...

2011 Topps Baseball Topps 60 insert

...and that's when I finally saw it, and this project was launched.

It all remained in slow motion until I was preparing a shipment of loot from COMC by looking for On Sale notes in the ole watchlist and I decided it was simply time to pull this trigger. After pulling this image from packs four times, I now had to spend actual George Washingtons, both round ones and a few rectangulars, to git r done:

2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary "Home Team Advantage" Hobby Shop promo

Yes, this makes three 2011 cards using this image (so far). Yet that didn't slow Topps down the next year -

2012 Topps Baseball A Cut Above insert

This one has a somewhat atrocious card back / theme that makes me shudder to think what the rest of the cards on the little checklist may have been like. Plus a straight glaring grammatical error. I'm not looking forward to Chat GPT creating my card backs but I fully expect it; this one has about that level of quality. Yech.

Topps then seemed to lay off these easy lay-ups for a few years, until -

2017 High Tek

Never one to discount double check things, nor consider shame in the creation of their products...

2018 High Tek

As I scrolled through the voluminous Hank Aaron listings on COMC, looking just for this image, I found a few surprises. Such as the possibility I could likely, yes, repeat this exercise with another extremely similar image of this famous batting stance, shot from the same vantage point and with a very similar splash of sunshine on Hank's right leg, but a different uniform. And I already had 2 cards using the image. I never have scrolled through all 2,600+ Aaron cards all over again to determine for sure if 9 cards exist with it, though, maybe. A batting cage shot is also creeping upwards on such a list also.

The biggest surprise came 3 decades previous to these 2010s cards however:

1986 Donruss

This one's not even a photograph but rather is a Dick Perez painting/illustration of that same photo. It's also not quite a regular "Diamond Kings" card in that this is a card explaining "The 1986 Donruss Hall-of-Fame Puzzle," which can be enjoyed by this regulation 3.5"x2.5" card, or a 15 piece "mini" puzzle also the same size as a regular card, or a full 63 piece 8.5"x11" puzzle one can assemble. Maybe the full deal there would nicely backstop this oddball collection. Could be fun.

I think this might partially explain why Topps became so fond of this picture - perhaps, it is in the public domain. Or, the original Perez-Steele gallery / Donruss rights to the photo had expired by 2011, don't know. From the card offerings, it appears Aaron's licensing went to Donruss for one year in 2008, then no Hank cards appeared in 2009 or 2010, but then in 2011 the Topps floodgates opened.

Regardless, I thought it perfectly anchors this little expedition into the crazy world of minting "new" Baseball Cards of "old" players.

Card Most on the Bubble: despite the general (though small) level of absurdity to this still enjoyable page of Baseball Cards, I am thinking about tweaking it. Which is because there are still more cards using this image, including a 1983 style card, a design I quite like. There is also yet another 2011 card from Triple Threads that would get this thing to four cards from a single year, which has some weird sort of appeal, too. Or maybe, five -

2011 Topps Baseball Kimball Champions insert

So my initial thought was one of the Tek cards would go, because I am not a fan of transparency in cards, particularly once they grace a binder page. And I'm just generally afraid to touch them. Maybe, both will have to go. For now though,

The Result