Players who are more known for a card than their career.

[Bosox Blair]

One more comment on Wagner. This forum, an audience of card-collecting obsessed folks, may not appreciate it, but there is a whole world of people who love baseball (and baseball history), but don't give a hoot about cards/collectibles.

I personally know several people who have read "The Glory of Their Times", but have never ever purchased a baseball card. To those people, Honus Wagner was one of the greatest ballplayers ever (which is repeated frequently in that book...the book is not about baseball cards...), not some guy on a baseball card.

There are hundreds of other books about baseball from which one learns about Honus Wagner the great player, not Honus Wagner the card.

So Bilko, Honus Wagner is *an* answer to the question, but not a very good one. There are quite a number of answers given in this thread that are not even debatable - I think that makes them much better answers.

(Frankly, Mantle is a much worse answer...pretty much everybody in North America knows of Mantle's career, and very few of those know or care about 1952 Topps...)

Cheers,
Blair