Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Enter The Multiverse

Now that Spider-Man: No Way Home is available for digital download I thought it would be fun to discuss the multiverse of card collecting.
If you are into the Marvel movies, go watch Spider-Man: No Way Home!!!
It's Amazing (no pun intended)

It's no secret that Topps and Panini have been pumping out dozens of parallels over the past few years.  Sometimes they may look similar to one another, but very often there are bold enough color changes that you can tell a magenta speckled from the standard pink refractor
 or differiante the lime green donut circles from the forest green flash variants.  
Every now and then though they release these variants (Loki reference) that look a lot like the original.

Right before the holiday season I was able to grab a pair of Superfractors that look nearly identical.
These Superfractors look nearly identical, right?

Well, if you turn them over you will see the only difference of these 1/1s.
One is the standard Topps Chrome Update Superfractor and the other is the Topps Chrome Update Sapphire Superfractor.

We are probably all familar with Topps releasing value boxes that contain a chrome pack with their Update release each year.  These Topps Update Chrome parallels are often very sought after as they were produced in very limited supply.  

Topps has been making a product called Topps Sapphire since 2016 and has recently made a Topps Update Sapphire addition as well.  Oddly enough this Topps Update Sapphire edition doesn't always follow the same numbering as your standard Topps Update set or Topps Update Chrome edition.  

All these parallels and multiple issues are getting tough to keep up with. 

Do you think Fanatics will continue the parallel trend that Topps and Panini has been building upon over the past few years? 

3 comments:

  1. Wow, crazy those are basically identical.

    I definitely think Fanatics will roll our parallels. Can't imagine a world where that changes.

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  2. Yeah, I agree with TLC; as long as those parallels have value to collectors, they help sell the product, so they'll be in there. Especially as the quantity of cards produced increases; base cards aren't going to be valuable, and there are only so many autos and relics you can offer, so parallels are increasingly necessary.

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  3. Agreed, I don't see Fanatics interfering with Topps in terms of how they do things.

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