blurred lines

sure this post title would have been more timely during the summer, or more appropriate if there were topless dancers moving about.  still, it makes sense for a post with cards like this 1986 sportflics card.

somewhere, along with rollie fingers' mustache and pete rose's batting stance lies the cubs' ron cey.  they are a trio of world series mvp's, although neither fingers nor cey are featured in the uniform in which they won the award.  it would have been cool, for dodger collectors like me, to have cey with pedro guerrero and steve yeager on one of these cards instead of three random players.

not all lenticular cards feature hard to distinguish players, though.  here are some 1971 kellogg's cards whose subjects are easily discernible to be willie davis

and claude osteen

the blurry lines are all in the background, just like on these kellogg's cards from 1978 of reggie smith

and don sutton

back to 1986 sportflics, this mike scioscia card scanned pretty well

but this pee wee reese card from the decade greats set of 1986 has a little more obvious overlap of the images when scanned

had i been younger when these were released, i probably would have thought they were pretty cool.  instead, i ignored them.  i had collected the kellogg's cards as a youngster and much preferred them to the sportflics releases.

i had no knowledge of 1995 topps d3 until more recently.  here's a raul mondesi card from that set

and here's mike piazza with a more traditional baseball background

and lastly, chuck knoblauch turning two

i don't think these cards had multiple images.  i don't even recall how much movement they had when the cards were tilted.  the schtick is lost on me.  i know topps has brought these types of cards back, in last year's archives release for example, but i would be ok if they stayed in the dustbin of baseball card history.  i prefer clear photos.