After having his best career season, Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton is in his prime. He's been involved in quite a few trade rumors with teams like the New York Yankees.
Personally, I don't think he'll be traded. He's been a Marlin his whole career and I can't imagine him going anywhere else. Besides, no team is going to take on that contract, even if they didn't have to pay all of it.
As of now, my Giancarlo Stanton collection is at 34 cards. Now, here are my top 5 favorites.
#5 2011 Topps Finest
This is one of the 3 cards I have of Stanton on the Florida Marlins which you'll see one more of on this list. This Finest set really lives up to its name. It's a classy set with streaks of gold and silver to compliment the Marlins' teal team colors. It's also not too much of a refractor type card, which I like because it looks better in person and a drastically better after being scanned. It's a very nice card, but a bit too boring to make it into the top 4.
#4 2011 Topps Lineage Stand-Up
Here's another example of a card of Stanton on the Florida Marlins. I also find it a bit perplexing that early cards of Stanton had Mike instead of Giancarlo on the card. Anyway, the Stand-Ups are some of my favorite inserts from the 2011 Topps Lineage set. They're 2 main colors, yellow and green and they feature a picture of Stanton with an option for the player, much like the insert name to stand up. I won't ever do it to the card because I don't think the cards should be tampered with, but the card itself is definitely worthy of the top 5.
#3 2012 Gypsy Queen Moonshots
These Moonshots cards from 2012 Gypsy Queen are quite possibly the best insert set Gypsy Queen ever put together besides maybe Fortune Teller. The captivating dark purple takes up a lot of the card but leaves space for the Gypsy Queen logo as well as the grey moonshots banner. The picture of Giancarlo is also not bad, and you'll see from the upcoming card that I love the Marlins black jersey. It's too bad it just doesn't stand out as much as other Gypsy Queen cards because if it did, it could've been #1.
#2 2015 Bowman's Best
Breaking away from Stanton's early years is this dime box acquisition from 2015 Bowman's Best. Apologies for the specks of dust on the card, these chrome-type cards can be impossible to keep clean. Despite all that, this Stanton card is definitely one of my favorites. As I've said before I love the black jerseys and the somewhat faded but colorful Marlins logo in the background add even more to this card. It also leaves enough space for everything else in what is a very balanced card. It's just a bit too Chrome-centric for me to put it at #1.
You may be asking why?
#1 2015 Topps Heritage '51
Because I am WAY more of a Heritage person.
Topps recreated their famous 1951 Blue Back and Red Back cards in 2015 Topps Heritage, and despite not following the actual design considering they made the cards full-sized, I'm okay with that. I've always loved these cards and I admire Topps for recreating them. The blurb on the front along with the old-school photo in the top right makes the card seem like it's from the 50's. I also love how they put the card number on the front. Mainly this card shows that Topps can recreate old sets and upgrade them in ways they need to in order for it to work.
Now if only they could always do that.
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