Orioles Card "O" the Day

An intersection of two of my passions: baseball cards and the Baltimore Orioles. Updated daily?

Friday, March 27, 2009

Vintage Fridays: Dave McNally, 1972 Kellogg's #29

This is not just a card. It's a force of nature. I love the faux-3D blue and white star border, the blurred empty stadium in the background that's meant to make Dave McNally pop forth in vivid color, the facsimile signature running diagonally across his torso, and of course his incredibly wide-eyed stare off to the right. This is how Dave McNally might appear to you in a bizarre dream, or a really bad drug trip if you're living dangerously. To think that the lucky children of the early Seventies got to plop down at the breakfast table for a bowl of Corn Flakes with a side of mind-blowing images of baseball superstars bursting forth from the ether.

I just got this card in a fun package of assorted Orioles from frequent commenter Max, a.k.a. jacobmrley. It's the first 3-D style Kellogg's card in my collection (I had a few Sportflics-style Kellogg's from the early Nineties), and it immediately grabbed my attention. I can only imagine what the collectors thought of it when it was released. I love this card because it's just different. So many card releases of the past fifteen years run together for most of us, because we see the same things over and over again. Glossy finish, huh? Yawn. Foil stamping? Ho-hum. But a card like this, a product that's both vintage and vivid, refuses to be ignored or forgotten.

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