Wednesday, May 8, 2019

a portrait of a young man, signed

i can recall the first time i saw mike paxton's card in a pack of 1978 topps. 
i had already seen greg minton's classic card (as well as dave kingman's), so it wasn't so much the painting aspect of the card that struck me while opening wax with my neighborhood friends and co-collectors; rather, it was his hat.  his red sox hat had a crooked brim, and the top part looked puffy and almost crowned.  why would an artist paint a baseball hat that way, i wondered. 

a few years ago, i found the photo that had inspired the card image on a website dedicated to the 1977 pawtucket red sox
as i said back in 2013, i guess his hat really did look like that!

earlier this year, i saw that some people had reported a ttm success with mr. paxton, and i figured i would give it a try.  three months to the day later, i received this card in my mailbox:
really great stuff.  and, as i have dave kingman's card already signed (as seen in the post i linked to above), i'm hoping to add greg minton to the list of signed 1978 portraits in my collection.

thanks for signing my card mike!

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations on adding Paxton's signature to your collection. When I first saw this card... I thought it was Tom Seaver.

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  2. Perhaps it's because I saw this card first, but I've always thought it looked much more of an obvious painting than Minton or Kingman and only the '77 Rick Jones can top it.

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