Year: 2008
Manufacturer: Topps
Set: Topps Sterling
Card Number: 227 (RY11)
Card Type: Parallel
Parallel Set: White Suede
Card Attributes: Serial Numbered
Serial Number: 25/50
I will be the first to tell you how much I hate the new trend in the trading card market. The move away from affordable products with large base sets to hit driven, expensive, low card count products is one of the things that is slowly killing the hobby. But back in the mid 2000's the higher products were more like going to a car showroom. Most car companies have multiple models that are affordable and met different consumer's needs, and sure there was some overlap in the models and what they offered, but they also offered some higher end models for those clients that could afford it. That's what the early and mid 2000's felt like. For the most part the hobby was affordable with multiple, ok, a lot of products to choose from with some higher end stuff mixed in for those with a little deeper pockets. Starting in 2006 Topps brought out a new Cadillac, Topps Sterling. This was Topps' high end brand. And it was nice. The cards were fancy, the hits were pretty, and very low numbered, even if most players featured had lots of different cards. And in 2008 with Sterling being HOF-centric and featuring player themed boxes, I loved it. Not enough to drop the $200-300 a box this stuff was going for, but definitely enough to seek out some of Robin's hits and all of his base cards. The set featured a large base set with all cards numbered to 250. You also got a few parallel sets. The base being numbered to only 250 made the cards fairly rare, but not too expensive or hard to find, thanks ebay. The next most common parallel is the white suede. Numbered to just 50 copies and very, very white. I've been slowly picking up these parallels as I find them for a decent price. Robin has 11 base cards in the set so it been a slow process and I think I've manage only 3 so far, but the hunt is most of the fun anyway.
