Adrian Gonzalez, We Hardly Knew Ye - The Ultimate 2012 Topps Chrome Collection

With all of the colored parallels available in Topps Chrome baseball, I figured it would be a great place to gain some ground with my Adrian Gonzalez Red Sox collection.  Besides, I'm a sucker for shiny cards.  So with some saved eBay searches and PayPal funds behind me, I set out to build the best 2012 Topps Chrome Adrian Gonzalez set out there (I know, shouldn't be too hard).  The last of my packages have finally arrived, here's what I've got so far...

Standard Refractor.  One card I haven't picked up yet is the base card from this set, so this refractor is the most common card I have at this point.  I was focused more on getting the harder to find cards first I guess, if anyone has an extra base to trade let me know!  I won this card for $.28 with free shipping.  How anyone can make a profit on that is beyond me.

Purple Refractor.  This is the second of these I've picked up, as Clay Buchholz was part of a lot from a few days ago.  I'm not overly enthusiastic about these, if I had to pick one parallel to do away with purple would be it.

Orange Refractor.  Very appropriate for this time of year.  Maybe I should have led off the post with this one.  While this is my first 2012 Orange Refractor, I do have a handful from other years and have always liked them.  As far as color choices go, it doesn't make a whole lot more sense than purple does, so I can't really explain why I like one and not the other.

X-Fractor.  That's a wrap for the four most common, non-serial-numbered refractors.  I've grabbed most of the serial-numbered ones as well...

Blue Refractor.  These are numbered to 199 copies.  A darker shade of blue would have looked better for the Red Sox, but these might be the best refractors to chase if you're a Royals, Rangers, Dodgers or Mets fan.

Black Refractor, numbered to 100 copies.  This card makes me wish the 2012 Topps flagship set had been done with black borders rather than white.

Sepia Refractor.  These are serial-numbered to 75.  They are my favorite overall refractors, independent of team colors.  Really nice looking cards, I could see myself picking up some more of these.  I'm generally a sepia fan, in case you couldn't tell by my blog header.

Gold Refractor.  Getting into the rarer parallels here, with these numbered to 50 copies.  I don't particularly like the look of these, so I'm glad I was able to land this one for less than $5.

Finally, there's the Red Refractor.  This is the best looking parallel for the Red Sox cards as far as I'm concerned, but unfortunately it's also one of the toughest and most expensive as each card is limited to 25 copies.  This card was a good example of timing being key for a player collection.  When Chrome first came out there were a few of these on eBay, and I won mine for a touch over $7.  Just a few weeks have passed since, but good luck finding one now...

I also picked up this Dynamic Die-Cut Insert, which I'm fairly sure is the only insert Gonzalez shows up on in this set.  Came from the same seller as the Gold Refractor, and he offered free shipping as well.  That was definitely a help in keeping the overall cost of this down.

Pretty decent run there, nearly every Gonzalez parallel and insert from the set is covered.  Aside from the base card, the one card I'm missing that I know of is the Atomic Refractor parallel, numbered to /10.  I made a play for one on eBay a couple of weeks back but once it went above $25 I was out of the running.  Of the remaining nine copies that exist out there, one is currently listed on eBay, but with a Buy-it-Now price of $35.  Guess I'll have to wait this one out.

Despite that one missing card, I still think I have the best representation of Gonzalez from this set of anyone out there, for two reasons...

I have the Cyan Printing Plate.  This is my third Gonzalez printing plate, and like the first two this one set me back all of $20.  Seems like an Andrew Jackson is the standard rate for these things, at least in the early going here.

That's not all though...

I also ended up with the Magenta Printing Plate.  This was my best printing plate deal yet, at just $14.50 and a couple bucks for shipping.

That does it for my 2012 Topps Chrome Adrian Gonzalez collection.  Printing plates aside, the refractor rainbow cost me a grant total of $21.71 plus $12.40 in shipping/handling costs, for a total of $34.11.  The two printing plates came to a combined total of $34.50, plus another $5.50 in shipping/handling.  Grand total for this project as it stands was $74.11.  I'm really happy with how this turned out, especially since a single hobby box of Chrome would have set me back more than this did.  I'm really enjoying this player collection so far.

Adrian Gonzalez Red Sox Cards - Count
Total Cards - 31
#'d /2011 - 1
#'d /999 - 1
#'d/199 - 1
#'d/100 - 1
#'d/75 - 1
#'d /60 - 1
#'d/50 - 1
#'d/25 - 1
1/1 - 4
Relics - 0
Silk - 0
Autographs - 0
Printing Plates - 4