Welcome to the second to last part of my initial Check Out My Cards purchase. If you’re just joining us, you can find the other parts of the countdown here, here, and here.
I bought a total of 85 serially numbered cards as a Christmas present to myself in 2013, which will be split into 5 parts for sanity reasons. It’s not exactly intended to be a “worst to best” list. Instead, I’ve sorted them all from cheapest to most expensive and then highest numbered to lowest.
We’re now exploring the virtual “over $1.00 box” but hopefully it’ll be worth the extra scratch.
#34
$1.05 – #/499 – 2008 Upper Deck Heroes Emerald – To start, we find our first, and only Greg Maddux card of the whole batch. Sadly, this too is not in an ideal condition, and I hope to find a replacement someday. Disappointing that the scans don’t always tell the whole story on a site that relies so heavily on them to make sales.
#33
$1.05 – #/200 – 2002 Fleer Tiffany – I’m showing the back of this card because there’s no difference to be seen through scans on the front. They’ve added a little bit of gloss to pay homage to the older Tiffany sets of yore. I’m still missing the non-gloss version (and the gold back)
#32
$1.08 – #/299 – 2000 Pacific Invincible Holographic Purple – I think this is one of my favorites of the bunch. There’s really not a huge variance between the regular Invincible card, but that purple pops perfectly. Also, acetate.
#31
$1.20 – #/750 – 2005 Donruss Elite Face 2 Face Red – I’m really glad there wasn’t a Face 2 Face 2 Face insert on top of this (or would it be Face 3 Face?). I said that the black version looked good, but the red looks better. I’m surprised card companies don’t use red foil more often.
#30
$1.24 – #/150 – 2004 Absolute Memorabilia Tools of the Trade Green – Home – Last time I told you that you’d see a similar card to this soon. Ta da! We have another situation where Home and Away variations exist. They do have different card numbers, but that still doesn’t really rationalize it from my standpoint.
#29
$1.24 – #/115 – 2006 Topps Co-Signers Changing Faces Gold – Here’s another one of those Co-Signers cards featuring Kerry Wood in a supporting role. Sets like this are going to be the death of me. I’m really hoping I can knock a bunch of these out cheaply through a card show or card shop. National, here I come (Editor’s Note: no luck this year…)
#28
$1.24 – #/100 – 2003 Absolute Memorabilia Tools of the Trade Spectrum – This isn’t a specifically blue parallel, but the blueprint look gives it the appropriate hue to pair with the Cubs uniforms. Plus it’s super shiny, so how can you not like it?
#27
$1.24 – #/100 – 2004 Leaf Limited Bronze Spotlight – You may remember the drably scanned base version of this card from earlier in the countdown. I found the rarer parallel for not much more money and the foil board makes it show up on the computer a little better. All I’m missing now is the Silver Spotlight #/50
#26
$1.24 – #/100 – 2005 Diamond Kings Bronze – Yikes. That painting is kind of scary. Those piercing eyes follow you everywhere. They’re hypnotizing me. Asking me to collect all the impossible to distinguish parallels. Yes. Master.
#25
$1.25 – #/599 – 2012 Topps Gypsy Queen Framed Blue – I forget if the framed blues are hobby only, or retail only, or both. I don’t ultimately care, but I do know that I really like them. The thicker card stock. The slight shimmer in the border (reminiscent of UD Masterpieces parallels). The raised border. Great stuff all around.
#24
$1.25 – #/480 – 2000 Pacific Prism Holographic Gold – Some of these Prism parallels are really hard to tell apart, and you need a visual internet guide, but this was pretty easy to identify (even if COMC didn’t do it for me).
#23
$1.25 – #/350 – 2005 Playoff Prestige Prestigious Pros Green – Oh, you thought you saw the last of these, did you? Well, that was just a trick. I got a small jump start on my Tony Gwynn set with this green. Tony’s smiling. He appreciates it.
#22
$1.25 – #/250 – 2005 Absolute Memorabilia Tools of the Trade Red – More Tools of the Trade. They’re inescapable, and they always come with multiple versions. No flashy foil this time, just a different color of ink and a pitcher relegated to the sidelines.
#21
$1.25 – #/250 – 2005 Absolute Memorabilia Tools of the Trade Red – And a batter/runner relegated to the sidelines.
#20
$1.25 – #/100 – 2003 Donruss Signature Century Proofs – Donruss Signature presumably is a product built around autographs which are (also presumably) difficult to obtain. For instance, the Kerry Wood/Mark Prior/Ernie Banks triple autograph #/50. Perhaps I’m just going to have to settle for this instead.
#19
$1.25 – #/100 – 2004 Leaf Limited Team Trademarks – So, before when I said all I needed for the Limted set was the silver spotlight, I wasn’t counting the inserts & hits. If you add those in, I need 5 more cards, including a dual relic that pairs Kerry with Nolan Ryan. Looking forward to adding that some day. I already have a dual patch card of those two.
#18
$1.25 – #/100 – 2004 Prime Cuts Century – We’re getting dangerously close to the end now. By the way, the reason there are so many Kerry Wood cards in there is because they fell into my price range most frequently. People overvalue Starlin Castro on that site. People probably accurately value Maddux, Thomas and Gwynn, but I’m not willing to spend that much per card most of the time. People don’t have many Dempster or Marmol cards, and again tend to overvalue parallels/inserts. For Kerry Wood, he has tons of cards due to his bursts of greatness, but low prices due to his injuries and lack of a chance at the HOF. The result is a plethora of cheaper cards to pad my collection.
We’ll see even more in our last installment. Join me, won’t you?
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