A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, no I Mean Dollars

I have been following the ebay auction from The Topps Vault for the 1978 Topps Eddie Murray Rookie Card Match Print photo, and could not believe how the auction turned out.

The winning bid for this photo was $1,136 !  I realize this is a truly unique one of a kind item, but still, over a grand for a photo?  I'm not sure I could ever justify spending that much on a photo, even if it is what was used to create one of my favorite cards of all time of my favorite player. 

However, its not the original negative - its only a photo that Topps made as part of the production process.  Don't get me wrong - I would love to have the photo, but I just can't imagine spending that kind of money

Two things I find interesting about the photo:

1) It is nice to see a little bit more of the photo that was covered by the white border on the card.

2) The color is definitely not as vibrant on the Match Print.  While you can see Eddie's face more clearly, the colors are much more muted in the Match Print than how they show up on the card.

Holding the Runner On First - Literally!

Following up my previous post on finding new Eddie Murray pictures I had not previously seen, I got a laugh out of seeing this picture of Eddie Murray literally holding Roy Smalley on first:


That is one way to make sure the runner doesn't advance!

Riddle Me This....

Seeing these 3 Eddie Murray negatives available for auction by The Topps Vault has me wondering WHY? - as in Why hasn't Topps ever used these images on any cards?




This last image is reversed. Here is how it should look:


As far as I know, none of these 3 pictures has appeared on any Topps Eddie Murray card. My question is why not? Is it because in 2 of the pictures there are people in the background?

According to the Topps Vault, these pictures are from Eddie's rookie year of 1977. Its interesting that they must have shot pictures of Eddie more than once, since none of these look like his rookie card picture:


Although...if you look at the black sleeves and the wristband, its possible these were taken the same time. Perhaps the negatives were taken before the game, and the picture on the card was taken during the game. I just can't say for sure that the background on Murray's rookie card is Yankee Stadium (but it certainly could be).

The reason I'm wondering why these pictures have never been on a card is that instead of new pictures of Eddie, we tend to get recycled pictures that we already have on other cards.

For example, in the 2008 Topps Sterling set, we get cards like this:


Which is just the same thing as this:


Topps has 3 images of Eddie that I don't think they've ever used, and they are auctioning them off. It seems like a waste of good pictures that could be used instead of reusing previous pictures on new cards.

I'm not trying to knock The Topps Vault as I really enjoy seeing the items that they put up for auction, but I would think that they would be going through the items in their archives for things they can possibly use for new cards before just auctioning them off.

Perhaps they've saved copies of the negatives to use these images at a later time, but I somehow doubt it. I'd like to see some of these shots from Eddie's rookie year on some new cards, but I have a feeling once Topps sells these negatives, these images will never make it to cardboard.