6 years in the making

Topps Triple Threads has been around for a long time.  

The high end set has been offered to the hobby since it's debut in 2006 and has been mostly associated with as a baseball product despite also having early releases (thanks to license agreements) for basketball and football.  

The base set when it debuted had parallels and a 120 base set.  Triple Threads became famous for their triple relic or triple autographs, but those early releases had REALLY NICE CLASSY designs with limited parallels to chase.  

The original set had sepia (/150), emerald (/99), gold (/50), sapphire (/25), and platinum (1/1) parallels. 

To put into perspective the "parallel era" the hobby is in now, the 2020 set had it's base set reduced to only 100 subjects, but also had 9 parallels in addition to the base card.  The 2020 set has amber (/199), amethyst (/299), citrine (/75), emerald (/275), gold (/99), onyx (/50), sapphire (/25), ruby (1/1), 4 printing plates (1/1 each) and yellow (unnumbered).

The sapphire has always been one of the harder parallels to get besides any of the 1/1 printing plates or 1/1 ruby (formerly platinum).  It is the only parallel that has remained consistent over the brand's duration. 

Suddenly over the past few months I have seen a bunch of the McCutchen Triple Threads sapphire cards pop up for sale (over various product release years).  I am not the only super collector noticing this too.  Other player collectors have made comments about these suddenly becoming more available.

I already had a bunch of other Triple Threads parallels, but adding this 2014 Triple Threads to the collection is a very much welcomed addition.  It was my last purchase of 2020 and one of my first new cards to receive in 2021.  One of my goals for 2021 is to add 50 new Pirates playing days McCutchen cards to the collection.