Our resident Brooks Robinson psychopath
, Mark, contacted me about the errors and variations I have for trade. It dawned on me that I am unaware of any 'legitimate' variations involving Brooksie. If one of his regular cards had a variation, there's no doubt it would've been discovered by now, so how do I scratch this insatiable itch?? Why, start investigating checklists that he appeared on. And
boom!!! I found one. (This will turn out to be very embarrassing if someone has already stumbled across it, but I'm assuming no one has.) I started with 1967, because that year has so many checklist variations that it was a natural place to begin.
1967 Topps checklist #531 comes with two distinctly different croppings of his photo. The first one, which I've decided to call
Mr. Chin, features his chin shadow coming in contact with the top of the black bounding box. This version includes a larger amount of dark shadowing beneath his chin and up the side of his face. The second version,
Mr. Cheeky, portrays him with more of a svelte appearance as the people at Topps cropped out a good amount of his face, making him appear much thinner. It's most obvious in the section of his cheek below his left ear.
This gif makes it easy to see both versions...
Neither version seems to be much rarer than the other.
Cool stuff!!