First off, the image used on the 1970 card was obviously from years before, since Stone played his only season with the Athletics in 1966, and was traded away from the organization in July of that year, and it is plainly obvious he is sporting the unique gold and green uniform of Kansas City.
But what I could never figure out is Topps evidently had an image of him as a Philadelphia Phillie player, as you can see here, as Stone is wearing the uniform the Phillies wore up until 1969, as they switched over to the “P” on the chest design beginning in 1970.
So why not use the photo? Was it compensation? Or problems with the Player’s Association?
What doesn’t make sense though is if they had issues with any of that, what was the difference in using one image from the other?
Does anyone know what the issues were?
I was always under the impression that Topps didn’t even bother taking “new” photography those years, but the image of Stone here seems to be from that very time.
Stone would end up playing parts of four seasons with the Phillies, the last four years of his Big League career, retiring as a player after the 1972 season, finishing up with a .241 batting average with 194 hits over 804 at-bats over 388 games.