Yeah, I Guess I Collect Xander Bogaerts

A few weeks ago, a comment left here by Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown kind of opened my eyes a bit.  I had mentioned that I don't player collect any longer because trying to get every card of a particular player is maddening (not to mention an effort in futility), but that I do try to pick up as many Xander Bogaerts cards as I can get my hands on within my budget.  Well, as Gavin so elegantly put it "I hate to break it to you, but you ARE collecting Xander Bogaerts!".

You know what, Gavin is 100% correct.  Nobody that collects a player ever ends up with every single card ever produced, especially not in this age of 1/1s, printing plates, etc.  So yeah, I collect Xander Bogaerts now.  And I plan to share a few of my Bogaerts cards here from time to time.

For the first installment today I've got a handful of Xander's Topps Chrome rookie cards to show off.  After all, every decent player collection needs some good rookie card representation.  Luckily for me, Bogaerts was included on the relatively small Topps Chrome checklist during his rookie year.  The card you see above is the base version, and it features the same photograph as his Topps flagship RC from the same year.

Of course, the best thing about Topps Chrome is the seemingly endless number of refractor parallels.  Believe it or not, I don't yet have the plain, basic refractor, but I have managed to track down quite a few others.  These Orange Refractors were exclusive to blaster boxes I believe.

I think the Purple Refractors were retail-exclusive as well, not 100% sure on that.  Neither the orange nor the purple versions are serial-numbered.  They sure are bright and colorful, though!  Speaking of which...

This X-Fractor scanned pretty magnificently I have to say.  This is actually the most recent one I've picked up, snagged on Sportlots for an even $2.

Let's move on to a couple of serial-numbered versions to close out the post.  This Blue Refractor is numbered to /199...

...Black Refractor numbered to /100...

...and lastly the Sepia Refractor (my personal favorite out of this bunch), numbered to just /75.

So there's a nice little run of Bogaerts rookies for my collection.  I'll never complete a rainbow when it comes to this card, as I already watched the 1/1 Superfractor sell for an astounding $478 on eBay a few weeks ago!  I'm happy to have these six though, and hope to add a couple more down the line.

Thanks for reading as always!