Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Thoughts: Seeing Double, Again

Sometimes there are things in this hobby that I believe are okay to complain about, and these are things like receiving damaged cards among others, but specifically for this post, I'm thinking of pictures being reused. In this day and age, is it really that difficult for card companies to use different photographers when putting together card designs?

Let me preface my latest findings with something from the 2010-11 season. In that case, UD Series II and Pinnacle made use of the exact same picture of Jimmy Howard. Not sure which came out first, but I still find it kind of annoying as a player collector that I've got two different (well, more like 12 different with all the parallels between both sets) cards with the same picture on them. Take a look.


Now, as far as 2011-12 goes, here's what I just noticed on eBay just today during one of my daily searches (sorry for the awful quality on the UD scan). On the left you have a Gold parallel from Score and on the right an Exclusives parallel from UD Series I. Those look like the exact same picture to me, wouldn't you agree?


Am I way off base here? Any of you player collectors out there probably understand, so I'd like to get your thoughts on this. Am I in the right to be a little annoyed here, or should I just chalk it up to dumb luck that the pictures are the same and not worry about it?

6 comments:

  1. yeah, it drives me too... but Topps has been doing it since the '50's... so don't expect any change now.

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  2. Wow, that's an interesting one.

    It bothers me when the same company uses the same photo on more than one product. But I can't have too much of a beef when two separate companies use the same photo.

    Pepsi shouldn't have to compare notes with Coke before putting out a product.

    It's just fluke that it has happened twice.

    At least they're nice looking photos....it could be worse.

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  3. You're right about there not being much to do to prevent two different companies from doing it, so it's just more of an annoyance than anything...

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  4. This is bound to happen, considering the huge number of products out there today. I don't know how rights to the photos work, but I would have thought that once a card company bought a photo, they owned it.

    I found a couple examples of almost the same pictures on old OPC cards from different seasons, and wrote a bit about them in this post, if you're interested.

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  5. I can kind of understand when two different companies use the same photo. But I can't understand it when the same company reuses a photo. Check out Don Beaupre's 06-07 Parkhurst and compare it to his 11-12 Parkhurst Champions. That's inexcusable, cheap and lazy.

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  6. I've been bothered by this too. I own only two Ron Francis autos, one by Upper Deck and one by Panini, and they use the exact same photo...

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