#3 - Hank Aaron Special

This is the third Aaron special card in the set, the second of the four-card displays. A lot of basic colors on those cards, especially yellow. I like his compact signature on the '59 card - very dignified. It's much neater than the one on the first card of this set. Maybe the latter was done when he was rounding the bases, which he did a bunch in '73.

A few words about the backs of these individual cards might be appropriate here. In '58 the stats were for the former year only and they were broken down by stats vs. each team in the league. Also the narrative was signed by "the Editors of Sport Magazine." In '59 they were back to multi-year stats and his cartoon is hilarious; he looks like a combination of Babe Ruth and John Dillinger. In '60 Topps reverts to the one season format - like in '52 - to make room for a bunch of season highlights. And in '61 we get back all the seasons along with three cartoons. In one cartoon Hank is pictured winning the '59 batting championship at about seven years old.

The back of this card has a list of Aaron's most memorable home runs. Who knows, maybe they actually asked him. I wouldn't be surprised to find out Topps did these all on their own. I guess they seem legit. I would think his first big league homer would finish higher than fourth but the guy had over 700 at this point so he gets to make his own priorities.