2015 Topps Archives Gold

Year: 2015

Manufacturer: Topps

Set: Archives

Card Number: 32

Card Type: Base Parallel

Parallel Set: Gold

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 40/50

COMC Black Friday Haul #16

Patience. As far as card collecting is concerned I've learned to have a lot of patience.  There were days not too long ago that I would have jumped all over any and all parallels for Robin right when they were released.  It's a  conundrum at times, because the time you see the most of any one particular card, parallel wise, is at release, that's also the time when prices are highest.  As I've gotten older, married, and become a father, my priorities have shifted, as well as, my extra cash.  So I wait.  I'll probably harp on this a little more, but I quit eBay, both buying and selling early last year.  While eBay may still be the largest online market place for just about everything, the fees and predatory buyers made selling a hassle and the increase in postage made buying single cards even more expensive.  Hence why I've picked up the majority of new additions via COMC.  What does this card have to do with patience?  Well everything.  I sure didn't pounce on one of these low numbered parallels when the set was released and I still hadn't purchased one for over 4 years.  But patience paid off and I found this card for a great price a couple months before Black Friday.  It's another reason I love shopping on COMC.  While deals can be elusive at times, with a little work and patience they can be had.  

2018 Topps Clearly Authentic Yount Checklist and Gallery

Robin has a card, well two actually, in this year's Clearly Authentic.

2018 Topps Clearly Authentic Reprint Autographs #CAR-RY #/99
2018 Topps Clearly Authentic Reprint Autographs Gold #CAR-RY  #/1

2016 Topps Stadium Club Gold Foil

Year: 2016

Manufacturer: Topps

Set: Stadium Club

Card Number: 227

Card Type: Parallel

Parellel Set: Gold Foil

Howdy.  It's been awhile I know.  I've been up in the Alaskan Arctic looking for salmon.  It was pretty awesome.  Didn't find many salmon, but did get to raft down some pretty spectacular rivers and streams.  We were based out of an old oil exploration camp called Umiat.  Type that into Google Earth to see how remote that was.  Anyways it's time to get back to Yount cards.

When Stadium Club came out fellow Yount collector Tony L from Off Hiatus Sportcards tweeted an image of Robin's card at me and he was a little upset about the image used.  At first it did take me by surprise.  We agreed that it was most likely an image from a photo shoot that led to Robin's 1991 Pinnacle Sidelines card.  I posted about the original image a while back.  I think the cards grown on Tony and to be honest I actually really like it.  

Stadium Club was loaded with great images, but this card is unique.  After looking through most of the images I do believe that Robin's card is the only one to feature a non-baseball image.  Like all Topps products plenty of parallels to chase, just like this Trump err Gold Parallel.

2005 Topps Retired Signature Series Gold Parallel

Year: 2005

Manufacturer: Topps

Set: Retired Signature Series

Card Number: 77

Card Type: Parallel

Parallel Set: Gold

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 149/500

Topps put out it's Retired Signature Series for 3 years starting in 2003 and ending with this year. Each box had 5 packs.  There was a slabbed (non-circulated) autograph card in each pack and a parallel card plus 3 base cards.  The design follows the flagship design from that year like in years past.  It was an interesting concept that's been tried again here and there.  If Topps was to bring this back I'm sure it would be a single pack/box product like the Archives Signature series was.  

The big difference between this and the flagship inserts, other than the price per pack was the parallel numbering.  Gold parallels were numbered to 500 instead of 2004.  It's a sharp looking card in hand with bright colors and a nice gold sparkly border.  And the serial numbering was still done in foil.

1992 Topps Gold

Year: 1992

Manufacturer: Topps

Set: Flagship Baseball

Card Number: 90

Card Type: Base Parallel

Parallel Set: Gold Foil Parallel

If you were to closely study the evolution of baseball cards tracing it back you'd find 1992 was a pivotal point to where we are today.  When you look at all the different color parallels spread out through Topps' and Panini's products their origins can all be traced back to 1992 and more importantly to 1992 Topps Baseball.  This set, or more accurately the gold foil insert parallel set is the locus where that evolution starts.  For better or worse it all started right here. And let's not forget we as collectors ate this up.  The early 90's was also a time the hobby enjoyed huge popularity and card companies were taking notice.  

Robin's 1992 Topps card is great for so many reason without the gold foil embellishment, but Topps uses just a little to make the card pop.  Had this been a few years later the yellow border would have probably also been gold foiled as well.   While I'm all about the great action shots this is a great candid portrait of  Yount the elder statesman sitting in the dugout with the bat cubby behind him.  By this time in Yount's career there's no room on the back for anything but stats.  1992 also marked the year Topps switch it's card stock from the old heritage brown cardboard to the sterling white.  While the basic design of the 1992 set can been seen a little simplistic the gold foil parallels really did add something to spruce the cards up and it's a great looking set in a binder.

2009 Topps Legends of the Game Gold Parallel

Year: 2009

Card Manufacturer: Topps

Card Set: Topps Baseball

Card Number: LG-RY

Card Type: Insert Parallel

Insert Set: Legends of the Game

Parallel: Gold

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 28/99

Might as well keep with the Gold theme this week.  The Legends of the Game insert ran through all three series of Topps Baseball in 2009.  Robin's card appeared in Series 2.  We can tell this by the labeling on the back.  Series 1 cards were labeled with numbers like LG1...LG13 etc.  Series 2 featured the lettering with the players initials like Robin's here LG-RY, and the Update series went back to numbering but the prefix included a U for Update, like LGU1.

There were three levels of the base insert, plus relics and autographs.  Robin does have an extremely rare autograph with this insert set.  And by rare, I mean of 1 of 1.  Robin isn't included in the relic set, but does have the base and two parallels, gold and platinum. 

The green border of the base insert is replaced with a golden border and is numbered to just 99.  The serial numbering is a little camouflaged just under Robin's name.  It would probably have been better placed off to the side then right under the name on the shield.  

It's also refreshing to see an image that hasn't been used a hundred times.

2011 Topps Tribute Gold Parallel

Card Manufactuer: Topps

Year: 2011

Card Set: Topps Tribute

Card Number: 26

Card Type: Base Parallel

Parallel Set: Gold

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 24/50

This card was feature on the blog many years ago after I picked it up.  And I can remember exactly where I got it, which can't be said for every card in the collection.  I was at one of rare, and now nonexistent, card shows here in Anchorage and I was thumbing though a miscellaneous box of cards and this popped out at me.  It's rare for me to find cards of Robin's at these shows and even rarer to find ones I don't already have and are this hard to find.  I asked the seller how much he wanted for it and he wasn't sure what it was worth, so I threw $5 out there and he quickly accepted.  Made me wonder if I could have gotten it for less, but I was more than happy to put a Honest Abe down for the card.  At the time these were going for about twice that on eBay and being a very low numbered parallel hard to find to begin with.  After figuring in what I would have paid in shipping alone my offer and purchase price was more than fair for me.

It's a great looking card, shiny, gold. I was going to make an outdated Austin Powers: Goldmember joke, but I won't.  I also like the image is a one not over used.  Probably not the best image, but at least it's different.  

2012 Topps Golden Giveaway Golden Moments Online Exclusive Gold Parallel Die Cut

Year: 2012

Card Manufacturer: Topps

Card Set: Golden Giveaway Golden Moments Die Cut

Card Number: GMDC-42

Card Type: Parallel

Parallel: Gold

Card Attributes: Die-cut, serial numbered

Serial Number: 50/99

2012 marked the third year of Topps' online giveaways and code redemptions.  I don't remember a whole lot about the promotion, because I ended up selling all of my code cards because I live in Alaska and the contest was void in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and just about everywhere else that wasn't the 48 contiguous United States.  However I do remember that you had the possibility of winning real cards.  It's a little confusing because that same year Topps also produced a Golden Moments insert card that ran through all three series. 

 There were three levels of cards, the base card, the gold version, featured here and numbered to 99, and a 24k Gold infused card numbered to 1.

A cool card when it came out and still a great card to look at.  Like usual the scan doesn't capture how shiny this card it.  The surface is also protected with a peel off film, you can kind of see it starting to peel away on the corners. The back is the same as the base card and the serial numbering is holofoil. 

More giant Younts from the online Topps Store - 1952 Style

I'm a little behind on this one, but I haven't seen any of these pop up on the old eBay yet.

Topps has been releasing all sorts of oversized wall art and has a new set out call '52 Tribute putting stars and HOFers in the '52 design.  There is a ton of options.  Robin has 3 "cards" in the set.

Players are available individually and are sized 10x14 on a glossy stock.  Each players base card is numbered to 99 and are priced $29.99.  Players also have a gold version numbered to just 1 and priced $99.99.

There are also team sets available that are sized 5x7 and have 9 cards in the set priced at $19.99, but for $10 bucks more you can upgrade to a gold team set that has an bonus legends card and the cards are numbered to 49.  Robin is the bonus legends card.  Here are the images from Topps.  I'm not sure if there is anything on the back of the cards or not.

The gold pack isn't a bad deal if your looking for a cool low numbered team set and a low numbered Yount and don't want to spring for the gigantic one.  The 5x7  size isn't too bad to display or store.

Oh and the Gold poster numbered to 1 is already gone.

You can find this stuff at Topps.com

Edit: Thanks to Tony L over at Off Hiatus Sportscards for sending me some scans of the actual card, front and back, and you'll notice that Topps actually stamped the serial number instead of hand numbering.

1992 Topps Gold

Card Manufacturer: Topps

Card Set: Topps Baseball

Year: 1992

Card Number: 90

Card Type: Base Parallel

Parallel Type: Gold Foil

This post is a milestone for me this year.  One of my goals this year was to post more on my player collection blogs.  I also set a goal for myself to see if I could post more this year than all the previous years combined and this post makes the 93rd post on the Yount Collector.  If you take the time, and please don't, and add up all my previous posts that would be 92. So in one year I've more than doubled the content of the blog. It also helped that I decided to on how I wanted to format my blog by featuring each card or oddball in it's own post and to feature any news, like new cards etc.

So success!  And it took me a while to decided which card I wanted to feature on this arbitrary milestone.  I've been featuring lots of modern, post career cards recently so I figured why not go back to Robin's playing days.  And what better card and set to feature than the one that pretty much started the insane parallel craze of today.

1992 Topps!  The first year Topps introduced it's gold foil parallel cards and I remember these being hot.  Not that they were all that hard to find, but pre-internet it was hard to find the ones you wanted.  1992 also was the year Topps switch over to a premium card stock.

It's a great card even if it's a portrait and not an action shot.  Robin in the dug out, the bat cubby behind him, looking the part of the sage of Milwaukee.  And a kick ass moustache too.

2007 Upper Deck Ultimate: America's Pastime Gold Jersey #d to 25

Card Manufacturer: Upper Deck

Card Set: Ultimate

Year:  2007

Card Number: PM-RY

Card Type: Insert Relic

Insert Set: America's Pastime Gold Game-Used Jersey

Card Attributes: Jersey Relic, Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 16/25

I miss the competition in the baseball card market.  And I miss great simple relic cards like this.  Back in 2007 boxes of Ultimate were about $200 bucks and each box had 4 packs with 4 cards in each pack.  Each pack had 2 relics and one auto, on average.  I can't remember when I picked this up, but sorting through my collection I was struck by just how simple this card is.  The relic window is pretty small, but overall the design is appealing and the holofoil on the card makes it pop.  The baby blue swatch was a nice change up from all the white and pinstripe relics out there.  Of course being numbered to 25 and being the gold parallel you'd expect something more exciting for the relic though. The America's Pastime shield is a nice touch.  

Gold at the card show.

I'll be honest the "card shows" here in Anchorage kinda suck.  So much so, that they usually get put on with the Stamp and Coin shows at one of the local malls.  It's the same guys, who I usually see at trade nights, and the same stuff.  I got an email about a show last weekend and decided heck why not.  I had a twenty in my pocket that begged to be traded for cards.  There were only two sellers there and I looked through all the boxes and pulled out cheap Packers parallels and then I found gold. Literally, well parallely anyways.

I've been trying to pick up one of these 2011 Yount Gold Parallels for a while now and they always seem to go for way too much on ebay.  I ended up picking this guy up for a couple of bucks.  Way cheaper than online and no shipping.  Welcome to the collection!