Discounterparts...who has the most??

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Gary Dunaier

Maybe they are now, but if Topps' original intention was for the kids to separate them into individual cards, would they still qualify for purposes of this discussion? To the best of my knowledge, the Bird and Magic rookies are the same card no matter who they're paired with, and if you were to separate them into single cards - I know, , right? - but anyway, if you were to separate them, there'd be no way to tell which players that specific card was originally teamed with (unless they appeared in different positions - left, center, right - on different cards).

Then why are cards that are separated, considered as damaged and no better than poor maybe????? I'll follow the money in this argument. I see your point, but will defer to the hobby overall as seeing these as complete cards ONLY with all three panels intact.

For the record, there are effectively three different images of Bird that appear in the set. First, his regular rookie image that appears as only the far left panel, the same one on the main Bird/Erving/Johnson rookie card. That same image, and position, appears on another card with Bill Cartwright and John Drew.

Secondly, there is a different image of Bird that includes a caption of his being a Rebounding Leader, that appears only as a center panel. Bird shows up on two different cards like this, one with Fred Brown and Ron Brewer, and the other wither Brewer again, but Junior Bridgeman replacing Brown on this second card. And I missed mentioning this Bird/Brewer/Bridgeman card in my initial post, so Bird really is on 6 different unique cards in this set.

And lastly, Bird's third image has him captioned as a Scoring Leader that also only appears as a center panel on two different cards. One has him shown with Scott May and Jack Sikma, and the other still includes Sikma, but swaps out May for Marques Johnson.

But it does appear he is on 6 different and unique three-panel cards, not 5, after all. Had he ended up being selected as an All-Star starter, like Magic was, and not just a reserve, he likely would have ended up on a couple more unique cards as well.