09 February 2011

what becomes a rookie card most?

topps famously dismissed maury wills as a prospect when they were signing players to their card contracts, and wills didn't forget.  that's why he happily signed with fleer and continued to spurn topps even after he won the national league mvp award in 1962.

here's his rookie card, the 1963 fleer issue:
he also had a card in the post cereal set that year:
for the 1975 set, topps created a 1962 topps maury wills card for their mvp subset, and that image was later used in the 1982 kmart set as well as the 1987 topps set as a 'turn back the clock' card.
wills debuted in 1959 and didn't get his first topps card until 1967 when he was a pittsburgh pirate!  i'll have to correct that someday with some cards that should have been (i wish topps had included some in their 'lost cards' inserts in the 2011 release), but before i do that, i do want to point out that wills was featured as a dodger on one card prior to 1970.  it's this 1960 topps world series card
while the focus is on luis aparicio, that's maury set to receive the throw.  some folks argue that it's charlie neal, but i am fairly convinced it is wills based on the uniform numbers.  wills wore 30 while neal was number 43.  i interpret the card to show a number more like a '0' than a '3' on the front of the jersey, although i admit that there is room for a different opinion.  however, topps themselves consider this to be maury wills based on the fact that they had him sign copies of it in their 2001 topps archives release.  still it's no substitute for a proper maury wills card.

so, what do you consider to be maury wills' rookie card?

2 comments:

  1. In the 2001 Archives set Wills has an auto, and they use that 1959 WS card. In other words, Topps basically acknowledged that it is, indeed, Wills.

    But then again they can be liars, so...

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