In my narrow view, a great baseball card should have a cool picture or two--photo or artistic, name/position/team on the front, and ideally even stats on the back. That's a bias I had for a really long time, and it pushed me away from a lot of the older sets.
When I finally decided it was time to own a DiMaggio earlier this year, the voice of the pocketbook out-screamed my biases, and I "settled" for the 1939 Play Ball--with no name, no team, and no stats. To my pleasant surprise, I ended up really, really liking the simplicity of the card, and of course Joe D's face is so familiar and distinct that one hardly needs to see a name.
Well, I can now add to the Joe D. his teammate and a key card for my Top 100 display in progress. And even with no name, team, or stats, I am thinking 1939 PB is THE coolest Dickey of them all.
73 down...27 to go!
Dickey_1939.jpg