Gambo and T_Wil1 Photopack

[rico43]

More disputed or unconrfirmed ID's, as we are trying very hard, but not wanting to be less than sure.

Long-disputed GE722 (not Tracy Jones?)


Leaning towards toward Tom Norton GI232


Surely this is Al Leiter? (FP641)


Alphabetical points towards Bill Madden (GJ810)


Wanted this to be George Myatt (GI593)


Appreciate everyone's time and effort.

[Merkle923]

From the top:

- The Expo. No idea but if you mean Tracy Jones, the '80s outfielder - the uniform looks to date to 1997 at the earliest.
- Tom Norton, Twins, 1972
- Jimmy Key, Blue Jays, circa 1990
- Billy Madden, Yankees, 1966
- Ed Roebuck, Phillies, 1966

[KenRaffensberger16]

Originally Posted by KenRaffensberger16

Jim Greengrass was an outfielder with the Reds
(1952-1955) and Phillies (1955-1956). whose
promising career was short by illness.
He had 2 excellent years with the Cincinnati
1953: 20 HR, 100 RBI, .285 b.avg. and
1954: 27 HR, 95 RBI, .280 b. avg.
His Topps 1954 (Reds) and 1956 (Phillies) cards
are shown here. He turns 88 tomorrow, Oct.24.

What I should have mentioned in my post yesterday about Jim Greengrass is that a player's 88th birthday is significant due to the fact that Wikipedia adds players to their list of the oldest living major leaguers on their 88th birthday. Jim Greengrass was added to the list today, Oct. 24 on his 88th birthday and he is ranked # 121 in age among currently living major leaguers
.
Here is how things break down by age on the Wikipedia list:

Age 100 or more - One (1) player - Mike Sandlock who turned 100 last week on October 17. Sandlock was with the Boston Braves, Brooklyn dodgers, and lastly with the Pittsburgh Pirates in a sporadic MLB career between 1942 and 1953. He was also almost a Phillie (Topps released a 1954 baseball card of him pictured as a Phillie, but Sandlock spent that whole season at the Phillies AAA level farm team in his final pro season)..
As of today 10/24/15 - Sandlock is 100 years and 7 days old.


Age 95 - 14 players are 95 and another one turns 95 on the day after tomorrow so that will make 15.


Age 90 - 69 players are age 90 or more.


Age 89 - 94 players are 89 or more.


Player ranked # 100: To make the top 100 currently requires the player to be about 88 years and 8 1/2 months old. The current # 100 is Al Richter
(88 years, 259 days of age).

Age 88 - 121 players with today's addition to the list of
Jim Greengrass.


If you look up Wikipedia's oldest major leaguers list - it will list the 100 oldest players (their main list). If you click "EDIT" at the top of the page and a little bit to the right of center, it will give you a new list, that I call the "supplemental list".. It starts at #1, but if you scroll down, it will go beyond # 100 and contain #s beginning at #101. This list is of variable length and continues until all players who have reached their 88h birthday have been listed, which in the current case is through #121 - Jim Greengrass.

[Cusick]

Given the uniforms on the Dressed to the Nines website, it appears to me that this unidentified player would have been with the Expos during the 1995-2000 period. I checked a number of players (but not all) from that period, and was unable to come up with a match. However, the spring of 1995 was a special case. The big league camps were filled with replacement players instead of the usual major leaguers and prospects. Merkle, do you know if Topps took photos of replacement players?

[okcochise]

I am looking for some information. I have been grabbing the images from the Topps Vault folders since July of 2011. For those of you who do that and have been doing it for several years, you know that those folders do not remain up indefinitely.

I grab Baseball, Football and Basketball and have created cards using the images for all three including a brand new set for 1967 Football that I will be posting soon.

My question is this: How long have images been accessible from the site? I am wondering of course whether I have them all. If someone here has been gathering them since before then, I would like you to send me a private message. Specifically for this inquiry right now, I am mainly interested in Football and Basketball. I am pretty certain that this site has done a good job of posting many of the scarce images from this source so I probably have most of the baseball. Out of 751 players for 1967 NFL (including those playing for multiple teams), I have found images (some black and white and some from wrong teams) for all but 61.

Another question; this one for Merkle. You've been to Topps and have gone through some of their stock. I've noticed while doing this 1967 Football project that many of the star players have very few Topps Vault images. Would that be because Topps most likely already sold all of them prior to uploading to that site? And do you know when they first began posting to that site?

Thanks guys. Sorry to interrupt the baseball subject; I just don't know where there might be a football forum like this to make my inquiry.

Jeff

[Cusick]

Marty McLeary was a pitcher on the Expos' 2000 spring roster. I thought he bore a strong resemblance to our unidentified Expo, but in the end, I concluded that he was not the same player. I'm posting the comparison photos in case someone wants to disagree with my conclusion. McLeary's photo is the Getty Image on the right.

What made me decide that they were not the same was the configuration of the right ear. The outer edge of the right ear on our unidentified player is completely linear throughout. McLeary's outer edge has an indentation as it nears the bottom. Because of the different camera angles, I found it difficult to compare the ears in other respects.

[FatJack]

Originally Posted by Cusick

Given the uniforms on the Dressed to the Nines website, it appears to me that this unidentified player would have been with the Expos during the 1995-2000 period. I checked a number of players (but not all) from that period, and was unable to come up with a match. However, the spring of 1995 was a special case. The big league camps were filled with replacement players instead of the usual major leaguers and prospects. Merkle, do you know if Topps took photos of replacement players?

Topps would not likely have taken pictures of replacement players as doing so would have violated their agreement/contract with the Players Association. Replacement Players were banned for life from the Players Association. Even years later, when the occasional former replacement player would make it to the majors (as some were minor leaguers called up by their big league franchises at the time), there was a firestorm any time Topps would produce cards of them (Ron Mahay comes to mind; he was included in Topps Total one year--many years after the strike).

[rico43]

Originally Posted by Cusick

Marty McLeary was a pitcher on the Expos' 2000 spring roster. I thought he bore a strong resemblance to our unidentified Expo, but in the end, I concluded that he was not the same player. I'm posting the comparison photos in case someone wants to disagree with my conclusion. McLeary's photo is the Getty Image on the right.

What made me decide that they were not the same was the configuration of the right ear. The outer edge of the right ear on our unidentified player is completely linear throughout. McLeary's outer edge has an indentation as it nears the bottom. Because of the different camera angles, I found it difficult to compare the ears in other respects.

The eyebrows also were not a match.
If it helps (it didn't really help me), this photo is in a consistent alphabetical run, bracketed on one side by Lamarr Hoyt, Ron Jones and Felix Jose and on the other by Mike Krukow, Randy Kutcher and Lee Lacy.

[Merkle923]

1. This is how to identify somebody like the missing Expo. First, get the exact parameters of when the photo could've been taken based on the uniform style. Then, since the photographers' backdrop in this image suggests photo day (spring training), search the Baseball-Reference affiliations lists for players in the entire organization of the team for each year. Here's Montreal's: Washington Nationals Minor League Affiliations | Baseball-Reference.com

1a. Remember that the alphabetical sequencing of posted images is just as often a red herring. The other players in the identified sequence suggest mid to late '80s. Why is a mid 90s Expo in there - without other mid 90s images - and why would you assume it wasn't in the pile by accident? It certainly doesn't belong in there.

2. The disproportionate scarcity of "star" player images is explained in large part by the fact that a lot of images 'walked out' of Topps over the years, to the point that eventually all baseball Hall of Famers and other popular figures were sequestered in their own filing cabinets, which were the only ones that were locked.

3. If MLB was a filing mess (with cardboard boxes full of images not opened since the '50s - I found the later-auctioned Koufax/Brooklyn negatives in there one morning), NFL was a disaster. I recall no filing at all, just a thick cardboard box, half the height of a movers' Wardrobe box, filled with loose packets of NFL negatives like so many fish in a barrel. Never saw any NFL folders or file cabinets. There were some for the NBA but they seemed to cover only about 1971-75. Didn't see a single hockey image, reinforcing the theory Topps got their NHL images directly from the teams.

4. No, Topps did not shoot Replacement Ball 1995. Nor (to my knowledge anyway) did any team stage an official photo day. Nor, as observed above, would Topps have been permitted by the MLBPA to use any photos of those players since even the ones who later reached the majors were not included in the division of merchandising income by the union (although I believe MLBPA eventually relented and gave some of the strikebreakers a smaller figure).

5. Obviously Topps has been using that auction image upload site for awhile. I wasn't made aware of it until 2013, so I have no information on that.

[Pinetarpress]

Originally Posted by Merkle923

From the top:

- The Expo. No idea but if you mean Tracy Jones, the '80s outfielder - the uniform looks to date to 1997 at the earliest.
- Tom Norton, Twins, 1972
- Jimmy Key, Blue Jays, circa 1990
- Billy Madden, Yankees, 1966
- Ed Roebuck, Phillies, 1966

The Expo is Catcher Jimmy Kremers

[rico43]

Beyond a shadow of a doubt! He even fit the alphabetical slot. Forest/trees, etc.



What is it with obscure Braves catchers?

[Expos 1969-2004]

Picture from the media guide published by the Expos in 1992...

[rico43]

While we're waiting for the World Series to begin, filling time laying to rest some of the last Folders we can deal.

GI236 Strong sentiment this is Joe Koppe


GI233 A Cubs Coach(?)


GI228 I would have thought the mole would make him easy to ID...


GI718 Young Ramon Hernandez? Four images in middle series only recently Zipped


One of last two IDs needed for Folder FP (735)


We are so darn close to getting caught up; these little distractions will not be necessary.
Thank to all on both sites and in personal emails and messages. It all HELPS.

[Merkle923]

From the top:

- That is NOT Joe Koppe. Koppe below - no significant facial features match. The background and other photographic fingerprints suggest it was taken in the spring of 1965. That one is in my file as "unidentified" - plus they never auctioned it off.

- Jim Napier, spring training coach, Cubs, circa 1983

- Ray Webster, IF Cleveland, 1959

- Nick Swisher, OF Oakland, circa 2002

- Chito Martinez, OF Orioles, 1992 (image used on his Bowman card of that year).

[Merkle923]

After the thrill that there was a color image of Dave Kingman from his two-week stint with the 1977 Yankees faded, something continued to bother me about it.

I thought I'd seen it before.

Sure enough, there it is on the "Wiz" All-Time Yankees set from the '90s - reduced to black and white. I would suggest this might explain where the image was hiding all this time. The producers of the Yankee/Wiz card set borrowed or licensed the entire packet of negatives from Topps, and when it was returned, it was never re-filed in his folder.

[Cusick]

It looks to me like the 1965 Angel is Pat Rogan. The middle image below is from his 1965 Topps card and was posted previously on this forum. It shows the same fangs in his teeth, and same dimple structure. The face is a little thinner, but when you look at the photo of Pat Rogan in an El Paso Sun Kings uniform on the right, the facial structure is no thinner than in the unidentified photo.

[keonleafs]

Great work!! Like you wrote, the teeth are the same...Pat Rogan it is. Thanks!!

[rico43]

Originally Posted by keonleafs

Great work!! Like you wrote, the teeth are the same...Pat Rogan it is. Thanks!!

There has been some real teamwork here lately. The next grouping I put up here later in the week might well be the LAST ONE we have for quite a while.

[DeweyintheHall]

Here's an interesting one from the latest TV release - Jim Hunter, in an Oakland uniform, with his hat partially airbrushed to reflect - the Oakland A's? Any ideas out there why the folks at Topps may have done this?

[Merkle923]

Well into the '70s Topps produced one or two so-called "test sets" that were either printed and distributed in limited test markets, or made and never actually sold but released only within the very small collecting world. The famous "3-D" cards of 1968 were such a set, as were "Greatest Moments," the large-format series from 1971.

Also among the Test Issues was the 1973 set for which that image of Hunter was destroyed. These were player images on the inside of the lids to small containers of "baseball candy." By this point MLB was aware of these extra collectibles and demanded extra payment for the use of team logos and uniform emblems. So, Topps started airbrushing them out, and not long after, discontinued "test sets."