the almost daily dodger - maury wills

i have a few maury wills cards in my "scanned" folder, and today is the day that they see the "posted" folder instead.

his 2004 upper deck sweet spot classic card

was a sportlots purchase last fall to complete my non-short print team set. i still need the numbered wills sp and pee wee reese's numbered sp as well to really finish it off. 

speaking of numbered short prints, upper deck used that same photo of wills on his 2007 sp legendary cuts short print

but in color, this time. i think they use the same photo for his base card in the set, just rotated slightly. in 2006, however, upper deck used a different black and white photo for his "when it was a game" insert from the sp legendary cuts set

that's the silver version, numbered to 550. it's also the "base" version.

this 2005 donruss classics legendary players card

uses yet another photo. this card is numbered to 800.

one of the reasons i am noting the photographs is because wills was famously absent from topps sets until 1967, with the exception of a world series subset card in 1960 that did not mention him by name. i have always hoped that topps would use some of the available photos from his first dodger tenure to fill in those gaps with cards in their archives sets. no dice, unfortunately. 

in 2004, as part of their all-time fan favorites release, they put him on a 1967 topps card as a dodger rather than a pirate as he was in the original 1967 set. the year before, they had him on the 1970 design in 2003's version of all-time fan favorites. the card was a downgrade from his original 1970 topps card because of the hatless photo they chose. still, i tracked down the autograph version of the card

for my collection. i've toyed with the idea of picking up the 1969 design expos card of wills from archives a couple of years ago, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. i'll be first in line for any pre-1967 wills cards though!