Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Is there really gold at the end of a rainbow?

The amount of parallels in today's collecting world is insane.  I don't use TCDB, but the site lists that Andrew McCutchen has 5,902 cards to collect.  That is a lot of baseball cards to collect for a guy with just barely over a decade of service time in the majors.

I only have about half those cards. 

While I do like to chase after many many rainbows, there are a few that I focus on more than others.  Prizm and Bowman Chrome have traditionally been my favorites to go after because of the amount of shine and refracting looks.

I have been looking at Topps Fire 2018 as another set I would like to eventually chase the entire rainbow for.  I feel like Fire has improved every year since it's initial release. 

2018 Gold Label is a release that I am getting very close to completing as well.

 Gold Label is a set that I see improvements for each year as well. 

There are 4 different colors to collect in addition to the base (pictured above).  As you can see in the picture above for the base version there are 3 different pictures to the left.  These help to distinguish, yet another parallel besides the color of the card.

In addition to the different colors, there are different classes.  Three to be exact. 

Class 1 is your traditional easy to find class.  Class 2 is the next tier up (think of it as a SP).
Class 3 is the top tier and the hardest to chase after (a SSP)

The 4 different color borders to chase for each Class have unique numbering and rarity.

All the Gold Label Golds are 1/1s, regardless of Class.

The Reds are the next rarest of the color parallels.  They are numbered to 75 (Class 1), 50 (Class 2), and 25 (Class 3) respectively.

The blacks, like base cards, aren't numbered but follow the same form of rarity in terms of Class 3 being the rarest.

The blues are fairly common parallel and oddly enough the easiest one to complete and yet the only non 1/1s I havent completed.  They are numbered to 150 (Class 1), 99 (Class 2), and 50 (Class 3).
As you can see from my page that I scanned in I still need the blue Class 1 numbered to 150.  It's on my wishlist for Santa this year.  I feel confident in saying that 2 years after release I will be able to knock out all the cards that aren't 1/1s to complete most of this rainbow.

However....
I also still need all 3 of the different classes Golds that are all numbered to 1/1.

I thought this particular set would show how crazy supercollecting a star player is in today's collecting market.  So even though I still have 11 cards of one player from one release, I still only have 73% (11 of the 15) for this particular release.

3 comments:

  1. Seeing as the "official" top TCDB McCutchen collection only consist of 399 cards, I'd say you won't have to worry about being challenged anytime soon!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really should sign up and start to use it, but it is so time consuming

      Delete
  2. When Gold Label arrived on the scene in 1998, I really liked the look of the cards. They were like Topps' answer to Flair Showcase or something. The different classes and colored labels were confusing, but the cards themselves were cool.

    Just like Gypsy Queen and Tek... Topps is running this product into the ground (for me). It's just too much. I wish they'd put this in the vault and bring it out in five or six years. Anyways... best of luck on you tracking down the 1 of 1's.

    ReplyDelete