Recent Pickups

Here's some of the cards I've recently acquired.

First are two issues from previous Fanfests held in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. I really like the look of the 2007 card. Both of these were from the Upper Deck booth. I believe I only need the 2009 Topps Factory Set Insert and the 2006 Topps Fanfest card to have a complete run of Fanfest issued cards (Playoff distributed green bordered portrait cards at the 2003 Fanfest, but they featured no Fanfest logo).

Next up is a card I've always wanted to own. I am usually not a fan of plain jersey cards (or most patch cards for that matter), but I've always been attracted to the 2005 Absolute set. The Babe Ruth Jumbo Jersey from this set, is arguably one of the top 10 cards of the decade. I got this for a nice price on a Saturday night.

I think one of my side Pujols goals is going to be to complete the Absolute Home Openers run. I already have the auto down and would love to acquire either of the Home Run parallels. I thought I did well grabbing this single version for a $30 BIN, but it arrived damaged (mark on back, chipping on front by the banner). Luckily, the seller was a class act and issued a $15 refund. I will be looking to get a clean version in the future.


Finally, my favorite non-autographed parallel from 2001. The Topps Chrome Retrofractor. I always thought this card looked amazing and being the proud owner of a Bobby Abreu, I knew they looked even better in person. That being said this is a gorgeous card. I've been trying to formulate a print run estimate but it's very tough to do since Topps Chrome had Hobby and Retail versions and very little serial numbered inserts. I'd like to think it's slightly less than the Topps Chrome Traded Retrofractor run. Beckett has graded 51 of these compared to 97 of the Chrome Traded, so maybe it's halve? Seems plausible. There were only 266 cards in the Chrome Traded set with Retros at 1:12 compared to over 300 for the regular Chrome set which were also 1:12 inserts. I imagine there's a significantly higher run of Chromes printed than Chrome Traded, but who knows. This is a gorgeous card. I'll probably submit both this and the Chrome Traded to Beckett. Hopefully they come back 9s.

Barring some insanely fast shipping, this will likely be my last mailday post for a couple of weeks. As I'll be returning to school. I will still update on various other Pujols related items.