How many teams can Panini cram into one player's card?
Wesley Matthews is one of my favorite ex-Blazers, and I continue to seek out his cards whenever it makes sense to. One of my recent pickups was this Panini Status jersey card from the 2018-19 season, via a TCDB trade. Matthews is pictured with the New York Knicks, but is listed as a member of the Indiana Pacers under his name. We also see the Panini standard verbiage on the side of the card explaining that the player has changed teams. I have no beef with this, and actually prefer it to the usual Topps practice of either using Photoshop when a player changes teams or just leaving the player with his old team until the timing is right.
On the back, we see the Pacers logo, but something else jumps out. If you zoom in closely, you'll see that the "game-worn material" was actually worn (allegedly) by Matthews when he was with the Dallas Mavericks. Now, I understand that there is going to be a lot of team-switching involved with the base card process, but I wish they would just align the player's photo and team designation with the memorabilia pieces.
Matthews has changed teams a number of times in recent seasons. In fact, the most surprising thing about this card is that Matthews only appeared in two games with the Knicks! This is almost like catching an appearance of Rasheed Wallace in a Hawks uniform. It's almost like it never really happened, but here we have real documented photographic proof.
There certainly is a lot going on here. Wes is one of my favorite Blazers from the last couple of decades as well, but I rarely ever seek out any of his cards.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on matching the logo with the memorabilia swatch. I'm sure there are collectors who would rather have the most current team with a mismatched swatch (especially if it's white since that goes with most teams). But I'd much rather have a player pictured with a former team as long as the piece of fabric is from that team.
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