Normally when you come across something on COMC that's listed as 'poor to fair', it's not hard to see why. Whether it's the rounded corners, noticeable creases, paper loss, etc., you're not usually gonna be left wondering why it's earned this particular distinction -- but sometimes, and it doesn't happen very often, you are. Such was the case back in November during the Black Friday sale when I found two 1975 Hostess panels from the same seller, both being listed as poor to fair, with neither having any obvious flaws.
When it comes to questionable items, I rarely take chances on that site anymore (they're missing a lot more creases than they used to), but again, these two panels looked fine to me, and nobody else was buying them, so I figured I'd give them a go.
I haven't really talked about it much, if at all, but I am collecting the Hostess sets in single and panel form. I don't actually believe that I'll ever complete any of the sets in panel form, but I like the way that they present, and am always curious to see who was paired with who. The above Carlton/Cey panel is my first one that still has a bunch of the box attached, which I do really like, but those seem to usually carry a bit more of a premium.
It took a bit of searching once they arrived, but I did find a small wrinkle (that doesn't go through to the back) on the upper right part of Steve Carlton's card. And while I'd prefer that it wasn't there, it's not egregious, and I don't think that that alone should've knocked it down to the lowly poor to fair category.
From what I've been able to gather, both of these panels are two of the more common ones from the '75 set, but at $2.80 apiece, I'm awfully glad I decided to take that chance.
