Shiny from All Sports

Still around and still collecting, have just been using my hobby time to further organize and condense, and after taking a break for the holidays have started rolling with some eBay selling/flipping to reduce clutter and target some really big cards.  If you stop by here with any frequency then you know this strategy worked out amazingly for me last year, and I'll just say for now that I'm off to a similar start in 2021!

Since it's been over a week though since there was any activity here, I feel compelled to post something.

So, here are some shiny cards that have shown up here at Shoebox Legends headquarters in the past week or two.  Cards out, cards in, my collection has very much become a revolving door, and I'm having a blast with it...

As a fan of all cards that use Atomic Refractor (or 'Ice' in the Panini vernacular) technology, I really enjoy the Topps Chrome Sapphire releases.  Most years they are fairly limited as far as print run, and out of my price range when it comes to unopened wax, but I will scoop singles up cheap on the secondary market if the opportunity presents itself.

This David Ortiz/Albert Pujols is technically a checklist card, but it was $2 on Sportlots (plus pocket change for shipping) and features two of the absolute best hitters of their era.  I think the 2016 version of this set had a print run of just 250, so this is a cool addition to my shiny card binder.  Over 1,200 Major League home runs represented on this card!

Here's another one for that shiny card baseball binder, featuring one of the darlings of the 2020 post-season.  This was an add-on to an eBay purchase late last year, for a buck with no additional shipping.  Numbered to /499 on the back.

I love shiny Prizm cards, in fact we're about to go on a small run of great Panini cards in general.  Panini's NHL license was short-lived, but one of my favorite sets that they produced while it lasted was the 2013-14 Prizm release.  If I can get a legit star on a team-color-matching Prizm parallel from this release at a good price, I'm absolutely sold.  Henrik here, in glorious red-on-red, was available on Sportlots for just a dollar.

The same seller had this Green Prizm Roberto Luongo available for a buck as well.  Both guys are right on the cusp as far as whether they'll be inducted into the Hockey HOF, but one thing that's not up for debate is now nice all that shiny green looks with that modern-day Canucks uniform!

Landing a Crosby or Ovechkin parallel from this release is pretty high on my hockey to-do list, if anyone reading this should happen to have one, I'll pay handsomely in trade...

I mentioned a post or two back that I purchased some 360-card Z-Folio binders on Amazon, and am hoping to fill one each with my collections of my lesser-collected sports.  So, one binder full of only soccer, one football, and one basketball.  I ponied up a full $9 via eBay auction for this 2015 Select Ultimate Team Blue Prizm Neymar card (#'d /299), mostly because I think the blue looks fantastic with this particular photo.  This card pops in hand much more so than it does in this scan, though it doesn't look half bad here either.

$9 is more than I'd like to spend filling a slot in the soccer binder, but 2015 Select is really prized among soccer collectors, and Neymar is one of the best players in the world, so here we are.

Got a couple new cards in for the basketball binder as well!  I mentioned when I picked up the Pink Ice version of this 2019-20 Paul Pierce recently that I'd like to complete an entire 9-pocket page featuring different versions of the card.  Well, here's the Red, White & Blue parallel, had for a mere 50 cents.

While I was it it, here's another one of those fantastic Pink Ice parallels, of Paul's one-time teammate with the Celtics.  Growing up in Connecticut, Ray Allen was a household name as a big star at UConn.  Definitely wanted to have him represented in the basketball binder.  As for why I chose this particular card, see my comment at the outset of this post about my love for Panini "Ice" cards.  

By the way, everyone says basketball is so expensive, but this card was 40 cents?!?!

If you've made it this far, I'll reward you with a couple more baseball pick-ups to close out the post.  A Jake DeGrom 2018 Topps Heritage Chrome Purple Refractor here.  This was a perfect pick-up off of Sportlots now that I've started a Z-Folio dedicated entirely to purple cards, especially since 2018 was the first of his back-to-back Cy Young seasons.  I'd like to get a 2019 version of this to go side-by-side with this one in that binder.

We started with Pujols, and we'll end with Pujols.  The Topps "white border years" provided some of the best colored refractors in baseball card history if you ask me.  Shelled out $2.50 for this card, and I'd have bought 9 of 'em and filled a whole page at that price if I could have!

That's a wrap for tonight, getting late here, and I'm off to watch the rest of this train wreck of a football game.  Thanks for stopping by to check out my shiny cards, and stay safe!

Shoebox Legends' Top 20 of 2020!

As I've done each of the previous few years here on the blog, I'd like to use my final post of this particularly horrid year to highlight the top cards to debut on this blog over the past twelve months.  The rules for this countdown are just that simple, the card has to have debuted here on Shoebox Legends between January 1, 2020, and today.

Each card caption in the post is actually a hyper-link to the original post where that card debuted on the blog, in case you missed it the first time around and are incredibly bored or looking for some extra card-related reading material.

With that out of the way, here is my Top 20 of 2020 countdown...

#20 - 1971 Topps Roberto Clemente

You know it's the sign of a good year for my collection when the last-place card in the countdown is a playing-era Clemente!

One of my big trends this past year was selling off cards and downsizing my collection, and using the proceeds to pick up fewer, more significant cards instead.  This Roberto is the first of many examples of the fruit of all of that labor in today's countdown.  I picked up half a dozen graded HOFers from this iconic set with some sales funds, but Roberto here was the best of the bunch by far, and thus just squeaks onto this list.

#19 - 1995-96 Select Gold Team Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky seems to have at least one card in the countdown at the end of each year, and 2020 was no exception.  This year he gets the #19 slot, with this obnoxiously shiny '90s insert.  I pretty much went out and picked this up as soon as I heard about these golden beauties.  I may have added some older Gretzky cards, and some more valuable Gretzky cards, to my collection this year, but this shiny gem is my favorite of the bunch.

#18 - 1964 Philadelphia Johnny Unitas

Using my Cardboard Keepers project as an excuse to pick-up some all-time greats outside my normal collecting wheelhouse has been quite successful so far.  Case in point, this really great Johnny Unitas, which just so happens to be the very first football card to make one of these year-end countdowns.  I'm hoping to (very selectively) continue to pick-up some NFL greats in the coming year, so maybe this will be the beginning of football having a place here on the countdown in future years.

This one's also great in that I picked it up at an antiques store just down the street from me that has plenty more great vintage to be picked through.  I've been avoiding going back due to COVID, but will hopefully peruse again someday soon when conditions are better...

#17 - 2016-17 Fleer Showcase '92-93 Ultra Buyback Auto Ray Bourque (#'d /25)

I have seriously cooled off on collecting autographs over the years, and have been trending more in the vintage and shiny card directions of late.  Nonetheless, there was no way I could leave this amazing on-card autograph of one of the NHL's all-time best defensemen off this list.  I'd love to pick up a few more of these Ultra buyback autos, but at just 25 copies each they are tough little buggers to track down in the wild.

#16 - 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractor Freddie Freeman RC

This gorgeous Freddie Freeman rookie card kicks off a streak of shiny cardboard here on the countdown.  This was a satisfying pick-up because I'd been after an affordable copy for oh so long, yet finally hauled one in just months before Freeman won the NL MVP, decreasing the odds of finding a cheap copy even more.  I'm determined to complete the 2011 Topps Chrome set in Atomic Refractor format someday, and this card was a huge win on that particular front.

#15 - 2014-15 O-Pee-Chee Platinum Traxx David Pastrnak RC

Feels like it's been forever since we saw any NHL hockey, doesn't it?  Well, things are going to start back up in a couple of weeks here, and one of the players that I'll be most excited to watch is David Pastrnak, who shared the Rocket Richard Trophy for most goals in last year's abbreviated season with the great Alex Ovechkin.  Still just 24 years old, David has already established himself as one of the elite scorers in the league.  I flat out stole this card at under $40 last winter.

#14 - 2018 Panini Prizm World Cup Mosaic Lionel Messi

Arguably the world's greatest soccer player over the last 15-20 years, in the top 2-3 players by anyone's account.  This is also one of my favorite soccer sets ever, and just a gloriously shiny, retail-exclusive parallel.  These Mosiacs are really tough to find, much more so than many of the other great colored parallels from this release.  I stumbled upon it as a Buy-It-Now just minutes after it was listed, and I'm glad I did because at the bargain price that it was listed at, it would not have lasted very long.

#13 - 2015 Topps Buybacks 1968 Topps Manager's Dream Oliva/Cardenas/Clemente

Roberto Clemente makes his second and final appearance in today's countdown.  2020 was another steady year for my long-running Buyback Franken-set project, and the best buyback that was added to the set by a country mile over these past twelve months was this 1968 Manager's Dream card.  '50s and '60s combo cards are just amazing, and to get one with Clemente into my project was more than I could have hoped for when I started it.  There's no way that this card ever gets bumped from the franken-set binder as far as I'm concerned.

#12 - 2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes Emerald Auto Carl Yastrzemski (#'d /99)

I know I said that I've cooled off quite a bit on autograph pick-ups, and I truly have, but it's more that I seek out quality over quantity I guess.  My first ever Yastrzemski autograph certainly fits the definition of quality!  What a bold, amazing signature it is, too!  Pretty amazing that it took me this many years of collecting to finally add Yaz's name to my autograph collection, but I'm happy that when it finally came it was from one of my favorite baseball autograph sets ever.

#11 - 1968 Topps Mickey Mantle

The first nine cards were great, but I have to say that the top eleven cards this year really took my collection to a whole new level.  I used a lot of my downtime during the pandemic to sell unwanted or under-appreciated cards from my collection on eBay, using the proceeds to land some big fish instead.  It worked out amazingly, as this card and basically everything that come after it could have easily fit into the top three in any of the previous years' countdowns.

One of my biggest long-term collecting objectives is to complete a run of Mantle's playing era Bowman and Topps cards.  While I cannot afford the 1951 or 1952 Bowman cards, or the insanely expensive 1952 Topps release, I'd like to get all of his other flagship Bowman and Topps cards from '53 through '69.  This is a lifelong project to be sure, but I'm pleased to say I came one card closer in 2020 with this nicely centered '68.

This was the first of five cards that I acquired in my greatest card flip ever, funded by a $5 soccer pick-up, if you can believe that!

#10 - 1985-86 O-Pee-Chee Mario Lemieux RC

It just so happens that the next two cards came in the same flip as the Mantle.  In retrospect I should have ranked this particular card higher, as Lemieux is a top-10 hockey player all-time in my opinion, and his rookie is also one of the most iconic hockey cards of the 1980s.  When I acquired this, I commented that I thought Super Mario's rookies were criminally under-priced.  I guess I was correct, as they've skyrocketed in the months since, as have many sports cards to be fair.  A definite case of "I'm sure glad that I picked this up when I did".

#9 - 1956 Topps Willie Mays

Yet another card that came in the epic $5 soccer card flip.  I'd love to complete both the 1955 and 1956 Topps sets someday, but I've been pursuing '55 with more vigor to date.  The price was right on this '56 though when I had the flip funds to spend, and I knew I wanted to add a significant Willie Mays card to my collection, so here we are.  I still get a smile on my face that's similar to the one Willie is flashing here whenever I look at this card.

#8 - 1971-72 Topps NHL Goalies Win Leaders Auto Esposito/Johnston/Cheevers/Giacomin

This year's highest-ranking autograph card is easily one of the most unique autographs in my entire collection.  I just think it's beyond cool that somebody put in the effort to have this one signed by all four subjects, and it helps that it's from one of the most iconic hockey sets ever produced and features multiple HOFers.  I may not be as into autographed cards as I used to be, but I'll always appreciate a unique collectible like this one!

#7 - 1955 Topps Hank Aaron

The sports card market was an insane place, full of ups and downs this past year.  Sure, there were negative aspects to this, like the fact that I didn't see any retail packs available even once after early March.  On a positive note though, there were ways to capitalize on the insanity.

Case in point, I sold a 1993 Finest Michael Jordan when his cards went bananas.  Not the refractor or anything, just a plain ol' base card.  Got enough money for it that it funded this second year Hammerin' Hank, one-for-one.  Yep, that's just plain crazy.  Since even a relatively beat Aaron RC is a four figure card now, this is likely the oldest Aaron I'll ever own, and I effectively traded a '90s basketball base single for it.  2020 was a crazy year, indeed.

#6 - 1955 Topps Ted Williams

This was the fourth of five cards acquired from my epic $5 soccer flip, and to date is my oldest card of The Splendid Splinter.  I probably should have had this ranked behind the Hank Aaron that we just looked at a moment ago, but I guess my Red Sox bias bumped this one up a spot.  As with the Hank Aaron, once I had this card in hand I felt like my 1955 Topps set pursuit was truly starting to get serious.

#5 - 1950 Bowman Yogi Berra

Here's the final card from my $5 soccer card flip, and honestly the one that I was most excited about out of that grouping.  I've adored this card since I was a kid, as I just love the image of the game's greatest catcher.  I'm a total sucker for 1950 Bowman as well, since the set provided the first truly vintage card I ever owned as a kid (a Maurice McDermott, given to me by my dad).  This card would have placed #1 in either of the last two years of these countdowns, but in 2020 it only ranked #5.  Yep, some truly special cards are coming up here.

Completing a '50 Bowman set feels like a pipe dream still, especially given what guys like Jackie Robinson go for, but even if I never get there I'll always treasure this beauty.  Speaking of Jackie Robinson...

#4 - 1955 Topps Jackie Robinson

The top four cards in this year's countdown are a cut above the rest in my mind.  Each of them is very special to me for a particular reason, and in this case it's because this is my first playing-era Jackie Robinson card!  A vintage Robinson is a great cornerstone to any baseball card collection, and I was pumped to clear out some cards I no longer appreciated to make space, and to finally acquire my first one with the resulting funds.  My 1955 Topps set is in hyper-drive mode after landing Ted Williams, Hank Aaron and Jackie here all in the past year!

#3 - 1968 Topps Jerry Koosman/Nolan Ryan RC

2020 saw me pick up another card that I've coveted since childhood, the Nolan Ryan rookie.  This purchase is special to me for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it was funded by gift cards provided by my parents and my mother-in-law, which I'll always remember.  I'm 100% certain that I will keep, and treasure, this card for the rest of my life.

When I posted it all the way back in January, I predicted that it might finish in the top spot on this here countdown, and it certainly would have been a fitting choice.  Amazingly though, I ended up with two others before the year was out that I'd put above even this wonderful RC!

#2 - 1940 Play Ball Joe DiMaggio

The first of those would be this 1940 Play Ball Joe DiMaggio.  I never in my life thought I'd own a playing-era card of Joltin' Joe.  Once again though, the craziness that was the sports card world in 2020 allowed it to actually happen.  I sold a soccer card that I pulled myself from a pack in 2018, that had no patch or autograph on it, and wasn't even serial-numbered, and made enough off of it to buy this Joe D straight-up.  I really question whether we'll ever see some of the insanity in sports cards that we saw this past year ever again.

What on earth could top an authentic vintage card of The Yankee Clipper?

#1 - 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan RC

Arguably the most iconic basketball card ever produced, that's what.  This was the pinnacle of my mantra of selling quantity to fund quality this past year, as I spent many hours over many weeks, and many trips to the post office listing, selling and shipping over three dozen separate graded singles to fund the purchase of this one card!  My timing was perfect too, as I picked this up just weeks before Jordan cards went bat-shit crazy as far as prices on the market.  The greatest basketball card I have ever owned, or will ever own, and a very fitting choice for the top spot in this year's countdown.

So, that's a wrap for the Top 20 of 2020.  Looking back at the past twelve months like this makes it pretty clear that this was the single best year for my collection to date.  2020 was a trying year in both my professional and personal life, but it sure was a good one for sports cards.

As nice as all these acquisitions are, what I appreciate more is the great camaraderie that exists between collectors, and in our sports card blogging community in particular.  In addition, I'm more grateful that ever to have my family happy and generally healthy, even if I don't get to see them much of late.  Let's hope 2021 is a brighter year ahead on many counts.

Thanks as always for stopping by, and I hope you'll join me for yet another great upcoming year here on Shoebox Legends!

Signature Sundays - Premier League's Top Scorer

I know soccer is not exactly likely to drive up the view count on any post here on the blog, but this week's Signature Sundays subject is one that I'm really happy to finally have represented in my collection and so wanted to show off here nonetheless...

It's a little hard to make out just above the signature there, but this is England's Alan Shearer!  Although he played before I was a fan of the international game, I've long wanted a significant card of his for one reason and one reason alone.  He is the all-time leading goal-scorer in the English Premier League, which is the league that I've followed most closely, for about the past ten years now.

Alan netted an impressive 260 career Premier League goals across 15 campaigns from 1992 through 2006.  That's enough to give him the career lead by a wide margin, as the next closest scorer is Wayne Rooney with 208 career Premier League goals, and he left the league back in 2018.  As for active players, Sergio Aguero of Manchester City has 180, and Harry Kane of Tottenham Hotspur has just over 150.  I actually think Kane has the better shot of the two of them, as Aguero seems to miss a lot of games.

While a sticker autograph, the signature itself on this card is actually very nice in this case.

Here's a look at the back where, because it's Panini, we see the same photograph recycled from the front.

That's all I've got for now.  Back to watching the DVR'd Premier League action from earlier today!  

Thanks as always for stopping by, and stay safe out there...

Rainy Monday Miscellany

It's a short three-day work week for me with the Thanksgiving holiday, and it's pouring rain and thundering outside on this Monday.  Since I'm having trouble getting the juices flowing on anything too productive or creative, let's take a look at a random smattering of cardboard that's been kicking around my "To Be Posted" folder for way too long...

The blacked out cap on this '68 Joe Morgan All-Star card kind of drives me nuts.  But, given that I found it in really great shape and for less than a dollar at a local antiques store, I decided to scoop it up regardless.

From the same seller in that same store came this 1993-94 Donruss Mario Lemieux Ice Kings insert.  While very short-lived, and not as well-known or appreciated as their Diamond Kings counterparts in the world of baseball, I nonetheless think this is an interesting insert set.  I had four of the ten cards previously, and happily scooped up Mario Lemieux here for just 50 cents, getting me to the halfway point with this small insert set.

Best part is, the store also had two other cards from the set, which just so happened to feature two of my absolute favorite players from my youth, for just 25 cents each.  Pavel Bure's long, flowing locks...

...and Eric Lindros' semi-mullet bring me to 70% complete!  Really happy that I was able to grab three needs from this set for just a dollar.  Whenever COMC gets around to actually shipping within a decent time frame again (hah!), I'll have to see if I can hunt down the final three for cheap coin and put this one to bed.

Back when I first got into soccer cards years ago, I picked up a complete set of these 1939 Wills Footballers cards.  They were surprisingly cheap, and I thought it was awesome to have an entire set of pre-war soccer cards.  I chose this example at random to show, even though I'm not familiar with Peter Doherty, just because I know Manchester City is a team that people with only a vague familiarity with professional soccer are likely to have heard of at least.

Here's a look at the back, pretty standard fare for these tobacco-sized minis of the time.  Cool set, and did not break the bank for it at all.  Too lazy to look it up to confirm, but I want to say I paid less than $30 for the 50-card release.

Here's one that I picked up years back, finally scanned and added to my collection proper on TCDB.com only today.  When I grabbed this Vladimir Tarasenko Young Guns rookie, he was one of the hottest scorers in the NHL, a pure sniper.  I've always enjoyed Russian hockey players, I think because I came of age during the Stastny/Fedorov/Bure era when those guys first burst onto the NHL scene.

When healthy, he's a lock to net between 30 and 40 goals a year, and to produce that same number of assists.  Tarasenko missed the majority of this past season due to injury, though.

Depending on how the 28-year-old rebounds from injury, he could still become a borderline HOFer with another good stretch of six years or so, like the one he enjoyed to start his career.  Time will tell, but I'm happy to have this rookie card in my collection while we see how things turn out for Vlad...

I picked up two packs of the Topps 206 set that was distributed via online-only release earlier this year.  I actually showed the first pack off here, which was banged up pretty badly when I received it.  Thankfully the cards were in fine shape, although as time wore on I found I was not all that impressed with them.

Turns out I like my T206 cards to be 100+ years old, with obscure players on them that I get to go research.  I'm not even going to post my second pack, and have already sent most of the cards from it away to other collectors.  I did keep this Xander Bogaerts that I was lucky enough to pull for my player PC of him...

...and it's a Piedmont back parallel.  I think these are the most common back parallel, but I don't care to go confirm that at the moment.  Either way, I will never turn down a new Xander card.

If you stop by the blog with any frequency, you've seen me show off some 2017 Donruss Optic parallels recently.  Well, here are a few others for a shiny binder project I'm working on.  I picked up three of Jackie Bradley Jr's Holo parallel...

...and three of his Pink parallel as well.  I plan to have an entire page dedicated to this card, three copies each of three different shiny Jackies, in the binder.  These came courtesy of Sportlots, and I believe they were 25 cents each if memory serves.

Also grabbed five, yes FIVE, copies of Xander Bogaerts' Holo parallel in the same order.  For a site-minimum 18 cents each, I figured I might even end up doing an entire page of just this card.

A while back, I became somewhat obsessed with the 2013 Topps Archives Gallery of Heroes stained glass baseball inserts.  I need to get back on that train here on the blog, as I do have a few others to show off, but in the meantime I stumbled across this fantastic Peyton Manning from 2000 Topps Gallery football and could not resist.

Just as with the baseball inserts, these are acetate, and look exactly like a stained glass window when backlit.  Truly awesome cards, and they can be had for pretty cheap coin, too.  I paid $2.99 with free shipping to grab this one off of eBay back in June.  While I'm not a football collector, I could see myself leisurely pursuing this 10-card set.  I wish Topps would give us an insert this innovative in a 2021 baseball release.

Here's the back, where you can obviously tell this is an acetate card.  Interesting that the football release added a die-cut element, as the upper right corner (or upper left back here) is cut away.

Well, I think I've rambled on enough for one day, and the To Be Posted folder is looking much tidier as well, so we'll call it here for today.  Thanks as always for stopping by, and I'll be back with a more structured post soon!

Mid-Week Draft Folder Fodder

I actually find myself with a little bit of free time for posting tonight, which feels like a minor miracle of late.  I don't have the kind of time it would take to pull some new stuff, scan or photograph it, and post, so instead let's pump out some backlogged images from my drafts folder...

First up, a French Bulldog "Collectible Canines" insert from last year's Allen & Ginter set.  I purchased this card for a very obvious reason...

...and that is the fact that Shoebox Legends' official assistant is indeed a French Bulldog.  This is Leo, who I'm fairly certain made an appearance on the blog when we first brought him home around three years ago now.  He's my favorite pet of all time, so well behaved that he hasn't even chewed a single card yet.  

Seriously, he has free reign of my office/card room, door is always left open and he even goes in there and naps alone sometimes.  There are small stacks of cards everywhere, many of which are within his very limited reach.  Sometimes he's even home alone with access to them, and not a tooth mark or toppled pile yet.  What a good boy!  The trick is that I let him nibble on an unlicensed Panini Prizm baseball card when he was still a puppy, which obviously put a rotten taste in his mouth (totally kidding).

Here's the write-up on the back.  I popped this one into one of those UltraPro OneTouch magnetic holders specifically for minis (which are amazing, by the way), and it's displayed on my home office desk, which has been my work area for coming up on 8 months now.  Nice work with this insert set, Topps!

Here's a really stunning Pedro card that I only got to scanning and adding to my collection formal very recently, even though I purchased it probably close to two years ago, maybe longer.  Everyone fawns over the 1993 Finest Refractors, and it's easy to see why.  To me, though not nearly as coveted, these '94s are equally beautiful.  This card practically glows, easily my new favorite pre-Red Sox Martinez card.

I got an absolute steal on this too, as a Buy-It-Now for $10 flat.  Nowadays, I have a feeling I'd have to drop more than that to acquire one of these.

I've been selling a lot of my soccer cards on eBay these past few months because the market for them went absolutely insane (it's calmed slightly in the past couple of weeks, but overall is still solid).  One that I decided to keep though is this Pitch Kings insert of Leo Messi from 2015 Donruss.  It's not worth enough to bother listing on its own, and besides I like the artwork, even if it is a little spooky.

Last but not least, here's a card that arrived in the mailbox just today.  I've sold a few of my Mookie Betts cards via eBay auction this week, with him being in the World Series again and all he's getting some hobby attention for sure.  Since I was pumping quite a few of them out of the collection, I decided to bring in this new one to offset things just a bit.  Cost me less than $2, with free shipping.  Technically it's a Purple parallel, though it looks very pink both in this scan and in hand.

I know what you may be thinking.  Earlier in this post I made a crack about unlicensed Panini sets being terrible, why would I buy this?  Well, the reason I don't enjoy most Panini baseball products is simply the fact that they don't have a license.  I think they should have an MLB license, because exclusivity seems to breed laziness at Topps sometimes.

In particular, I really love the 2017 Donruss Optic set.  If these had proper team names and logos this might be my favorite baseball release of the 2010s, not even kidding.  Just look at the Optic basketball or football sets that use this design, both of which are licensed, and you'll see what I mean.  In hand, the parallels from this Optic set are some of the shiniest baseball cards in my entire collection.

I'm not even doing it justice here, trust me, but just look at how this card catches and refracts the light.  Tilting it around side to side I almost get lost in the rainbow reflection.  Just beautiful.  In fact, I have a project in mind involving some of the parallels from this set, but that's for another post on another day.

That's all for tonight, here's Leo one more time, doing his best impression of the year 2020.

Thanks for stopping by!  Until next time, stay safe out there.