Another Episode of - Haven't I Seen That Before?

Funny story... I posted the 2017 Series 1 Yount checklist and was just casually scrolling down my blog feed when I notice something and it made me do a double take.  I'll be honest had I not just done a post about Robin's 2005 Upper Deck Past Time Pennants card this would have totally escaped me.  I had to laugh.  Not only does Topps recycle the same image over and over again within it's own products, yes I know they use licensed images, but now we get to see Topps use images that other card companies have used.  I'm not mad it just makes me shake my head a little.  I mean Robin played baseball for 20 years!  I'm sure he had tens of thousands of potential images that could be used.  That's probably why I was a big cheerleader for his Stadium Club card last year.  It was unique to the set being the only card not to feature a player doing something basebally, and it was an image I hadn't seen used before.  

Here's a nice side by side.

2005 Upper Deck Past Time Pennants

Year: 2005

Manufacturer: Upper Deck

Set: Past Time Pennants

Card Number: 70

Card Type: Base

Recently there was a discussion going around Twitter about what to call the base cards of a set, base or commons.  It's funny to me because when Panini bought Donruss a few years back and started putting out sets, their sell sheets referred to the base cards as commons.  And more than once I told Panini to stop calling the base cards commons.  Here's the thing the term common refers to the scarcity of the cards, so while the base set is most definitely the most numerous cards in a release and hence common, referring to them as the common set already denotes them as mostly worthless.  And for me and many other collectors that's just not true. 

I'm a big fan of the base set.  For me a modern card product is build like a pyramid.  With the base set as the foundation for the release.  It's what all the other inserts and parallels are built around.  It's probably the my biggest gripe with the industry as a whole as we are starting to see more and more sets released with no base cards at all.

I think the mid 2000's, especially 2005, epitomizes my pyramid analogy.  Especially just about every set Donruss and Upper Deck put out that year.  Past Time Pennants was no different.  Lots of parallels and inserts to chase.  But I still love a good base card.

A great action shot on the front and a nice write up on the back with Robin's 5 best year stats listed. For my money I would rather have 20 different base cards featuring Robin than one relic or auto card in my collection, but that's just me.