Swell's concept didn't change for 1991. They were still putting out a set with former players called "Baseball Greats." This set had 150 cards, and among those, six were Cubs.
Of the six Cubs, the only player that Swell hadn't include before was Fergie Jenkins.
Among the repeats are Billy Herman, Don Kessinger, and Billy Williams.
But with these two cards, things get weird. It's not the selection of Ernie Banks and Ron Santo. Rather, its their choice of pictures for the cards. If you're a regular reader here, you may have noticed that you saw those pictures before. Where?
On these cards put out by Impel in their Line Drive set. Even stranger, both the Swell and Line Drive sets were issued in the same year, 1991. I know that we ofter see repeated pictures on cards, but how often do you see two different companies issue cards with the same pictures during the same year?
Definitely an odd repeat.
There was Rod Carew's 1982 Fleer card. It used the same photo Topps featured on his "In Action" card the same year.
ReplyDeleteTopps does that quite a bit nowadays with its legends appearances in mainstream products. I have noticed with Walter Payton cards, you will see them borrow photos from different years and use them on insert products, like the 2006 Wal Mart release and the 2007 Topps Chrome royalty card with Tomlinson.
ReplyDeleteI found it odd that an issue of anything with Ernie Banks would have him bunting...
I compared all the the 1991 Line Drive cards (50) with the 1991 Swell Baseball Greats cards, and all the photographs are the same as well as the player information on the back.
ReplyDeleteEither there is a truly outstanding coincidence taking place, or there was some relationship between Line Drive and Swell.