18 September 2011

in which i make the case that one is better than two

i was surprised to see not one but two danny valencia cards in topps' series 2 release.  one has him in the home whites
and the other in the away grays.
each card has a different number in the set, so i knew it wasn't a variation. they are numbered only a couple cards apart which is weird. the first one has the rookie cup, so i figured maybe one of the cards was a checklist or something.  nope.  here's the back of the first one 
now here's the second valencia card back
they both have the full stat display.  aside from the number, the inset photo and the text writeup, the backs are the same.  it seems silly for topps to have produced two cards for the twins' third baseman when just one would do.  in the 2011 topps twins team set, there was only one valencia card
and even though they used the photo from what would be valencia's second card in series 2, they managed to get the rookie cup on it.  makes sense to me.  are there any other players that got two cards thanks to a rookie cup?
speaking of series 2, topps updated the tsuyoshi nishioka card, and although i like seeing ron gardenhire on a card, i can't complain about a double play turn
with alexi casilla lurking and jose bautista sliding in.

another nice update from the team set is joe mauer's card
same photo; it just looks better in landscape.  topps got that one right.
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2 comments:

  1. night owlSeptember 18, 2011 at 9:40 AM

    There are several cards like this in Topps Series 1 and Series 2. In most cases it's the rookie cup guys. There is one card with the cup and one without.

    But this guy has no rookie cup at all, and is the strangest example I've found:

    http://nightowlcards.blogspot.com/2011/08/team-colors-rockies-plus-what-tha.html

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  2. moremonkeys138September 18, 2011 at 4:07 PM

    The Owl is correct. Each rookie cup card has a regular card as well. For some reason Topps felt it was needed to have two of each of these guys in there, taking away yet another card that could have been some other player. Maybe due to them having to have two Strasburgs in there and they can't look exclusionary, so they did it to everyone. No clue why. The Hammel on the other hand is just weird and has to be a screw-up....right?

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