A Curious Tale of Bubba Smith...

[JollyElm]

Every time I run across an old Bubba Smith card, it seems to feature the same photograph, so I finally decided to dive in and see what the heck was going on.

• In his relatively short Topps career, the very same picture was used on his:

1970 'rookie' card, his 1971 card, his 1972 All Pro card, his 1975 card, and also on his very last card in 1976. The only year 'free' of this picture was 1973, and he didn't appear in the 1974 Topps set, but you have to assume that if any mock-ups were produced, they undoubtedly featured the same outdated, standby photograph. Pictured as a member of three separate teams, the art department airbrushed him into three different colored uniforms.

Couldn't Topps have snapped some other pictures during his playing career??? Did their photographers decide to take a knee on the play?? Perhaps a phone call to his parents would've been warranted: "Mrs. Smith, Topps here. We're wondering if you happen to have any recent photos of your son, Charles, that we could borrow?"

On a side not, the massive DE appeared on a single Kellogg's card (in 1970). Take a frickin' wild guess what photograph they used??

bubbasmithcards.jpg


Are there any other players in sports who even came close to this amount of same-photograph coverage over the years???