Chances are you have dozens of Bob Bartosz’s photographs in your collection. If you collected Fleer trading cards in the 1980’s, his work is in your box or binder. He shot Glen Hubbard with the snake wrapped around his neck. Pete Rose. A young Ryne Sandberg.
Bartosz was a newspaper photographer who went to work for Fleer Corporation after the end of the long Topps monopoly in the early 1980’s.
It was a peachy assignment.
He went to Florida, all expenses paid, and then got paid for the shots Fleer used to produce its many card sets. His wife became a proofreader for the company.
Bud Black and Vida Blue, photographed together? Of course, that was the ‘Black and Blue’ Fleer card.
At 77, Bartosz is retired and living in North Carolina, but showed off some of his 20,000 photographs in this interview with the News & Observer.
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