[Bestdj777]

Originally Posted by AustinMike

Several days ago, I learned about the variations in the small Mantle Dormund post card in this thread. Today, I'd like to pick everyone's brains about the attached Mantle pencil sets.

In the attached photos, the set on the right is the red packaging set that is available frequently on ebay and in auctions. The set on the left I picked up and was told it was a version sold at Yankee Stadium back in the day. After receiving the pencil set, my first thought was that it is the normal packaging minus the red color. But on closer inspection, there are a few other differences. (1) In the closeup, you can see the fielder extends more into the Mantle photo on the red version versus the red-less version. (2) Mantle's photo is cropped differently between the two packages. On the red version, you see more of the uniform to the right of the stripe on Mantle's right shoulder than on the red-less version. And finally, (3) the green "grass" in the field on the red version doesn't seem to be as dense as on the red-less version allowing more white to show through the green specs.

So, the ultimate question, is this a true variation of the Mantle pencil set or a very clever fantasy piece? Does anyone else have one or has anyone else seen one?

Doubt anyone is making any fantasy pieces of this as they aren’t particularly valuable. To be honest, yours just looks faded/dirty to me. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were minor printing discrepancies throughout the issue. I don’t think that color/style is appealing enough that they’d issue it using that when they already had a nice design they could have used.