I Kennys See CLEAR-ly Now

 

This has been a long long LONG time coming! I've had several different saved searches on eBay. "Kennys Vargas," "Kenny Vargas," "Kennys Vargas Clear," "Kennys Vargas Acetate," "Kennys Vargas /10" "Kenny Vargas /10" "Vargas Clear" "Vargas Acetate" "2015 Topps Clear" "2015 Topps Acetate" "2015 Topps /10" All of these searches would have no new results for months at a time. When results did pop up, I would be briefly excited, only to feel deflated soon after. 

And then, finally! A new listing appeared! COULD IT BE? The listing was for "2015 Topps Kenny Varga Clear 2/10" Close enough! BUY IT NOW!

My first post about trying to put together this rainbow was added on March 16, 2015 - no kidding!

And now, just 7 short years later, the card appeared as though it was the most normal thing in the world to be listed for sale. In the comments section for that 2015 post I lamented that I waited too long to decide to try for the rainbow - 2 copies of the Topps Clear version had already sold, and none were available for purchase. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time this card was up for sale on eBay since then.

Here are the lowest print run Kennys I have in the various issues from 2015 Topps. A Chrome red refractor /5, an online only Topps Mini /5, and oh, yeah, I have the platinum 1/1 too. So... now what? Well, I missed out on the Chrome Superfractor about 6 years ago, maybe that will go on sale some day? I also have yet to see any 2015 printing plates of Kennys in the wild or online, I guess that would really complete the set. 

A NEW (to me) Kennys Vargas card and a Rosie Relic Rainbow!

 

"2019 New Face" is an old friend for this blogger. Kennys Vargas spent last season trying to adjust to baseball in Japan, and had a rough time. He hit just 1 homer for the Chiba Lotte Marines, and was even sent down to their minor league affiliate for some time. The front of this card is super sparkly and shiny in the light.

Here's the back - I think all those Cs and Ds might be letter grades for his various skills... ouch. This year, Vargas was poised to be that 26th or 28th man at the end of the bench for the Tigers and his former manager Ron Gardenhire, but he didn't make the squad out of spring training. COVID wrecked any chance for him to impress in AAA action, and he was left of the alternate site squad as well. Hard to know at this point where he will land, but I expect him to play in the Puerto Rican winter league again this off season, and who knows?

These relics are from 2020 Series 1 - Eddie's base card was in Series 2, so I mostly ignored these relics until finding them more reasonably priced on eBay.

The gold is numbered to 50 - both the black border and gold border offerings seemed to be the plain gray swatch variety - I haven't seen any yet that were more colorful.

The red bordered parallel is /25, is probably 3X thick, and has a nice patch that incorporates part of the jersey with a letter on it. Not sure if there are more variations, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a 1/1 at the bottom of a warehouse somewhere. 

Do you have a player collection of a guy that's still active, but not in the major leagues? 

Thanks for reading!

Rosie Gets The Chrome-Plated Treament (Rosie Rainbow)

 

The ROSIE RAINBOW is now getting a nice Chrome finish! As a reminder, I am working on an Eddie Rosario 2020 Topps rainbow. He was in Opening Day, Series 2, Chrome, and several other smaller niche sets, one of which you'll see featured below.

Rosie is card #78 in the Chrome set, and here is the base, the refractor, the prism refractor, the X-Fractor, Negative, Sepia, Pink, Purple, and Blue Refactors. The Blue is the only serial numbered card on the page, limited to 250 copies.

Page two of Chrome gets a little spicier - these are all serial numbered. Green /99, Gold /50, and Orange /25. There's also a Green Wave, Gold Wave, Orange Wave, and Blue Wave, with the same print run as their non-wavy counterparts. I haven't seen them online yet, but in theory the /5 Red and Red Wave parallels could slide right in there. Still haven't seen a Chrome printing plate for Rosie, either.

And here's that "other" niche set I mentioned earlier - the Ben Baller Chrome set. I have found the Base, Blue, Green, and Gold. There should be an Orange, Red, and Superfractor out there somewhere, but I would not be surprised if I miss out on those.

Chrome "Sapphire" edition is out and sold out - there's a base Blue and at least two variations that I've seen so far (no Rosie's - yet.) And I suspect Topps will release a mini set again this year, which will again have a series of parallels to chase. 

How are your rainbows going out there? 

Stay safe and thanks for reading!

Rainbow Intensifies

Oh it's getting real now - The ROSIE RAINBOW is in full effect! For Opening Day, we've got base, Red Foil, Purple Foil, Blue Foil, and a printing plate! For Series 2, you can see the base card, the Minnesota Team Set parallel, then Gold, Rainbow Foil, and Gold Rainbow Foil.

The Gold is numbered to /2020 and here are the backs....

These all look pretty much the same, you can see the Team Set card stands out with the different number. 

Page 2 is a work in progress, but a lot of progress has been made! Here we get into the parallels.

Advanced Stats /300, Vintage Stock /99, Black /69.

Mother's Day /50 (missing!!), Photo Variation, Father's Day /50.

Independence Day /76, Camo (Memorial Day?) /25, and Walgreen's Yellow Parallel.

The Advanced stats parallel shows how Eddie has increased his barrels and his exit velocity every year, which explains in part how he had a career high in homers and RBI in 2019.

Last but not least there were these online exclusive 5X7s of the photo variation. The "base" is numbered to /49 and the "Gold" is numbered to /10.  I assume I missed out on a 1/1 in there too. 

So.... what's left? I have yet to see a listing (active or sold) for the Mother's Day Parallel, even though I've seen plenty for other players in Series 2. I know that Eddie was excluded from the "Clear" /10 acetate parallel, which is a mixed blessing. I would have loved to add that to the rainbow, but part of me is relieved I don't have to pay for one! So all it will take to complete the rainbow is to find the Mother's Day parallel (and maybe find another printing plate). 

Topps Chrome has to be coming out eventually, and I bet there will be another round of Topps mini this year and that will have a bunch of parallels, too. 

How are everyone else's rainbows doing? I know gcrl is working on Kiké Hernandez, and Tom is working on a Vogelmonster Rainbow - anyone else?

2020 ROSIE RAINBOW - "Blue Plate Special"

 This year, I am chasing a ROSIE RAINBOW so buckle up! 

Here's my progress to date: 

Series 2 came out late last week, and I've already won an auction for a Twins Team break - I should be all set on the base card, and I picked up the father's day parallel for a good price, but I will be hunting for more! In the meantime I made one more Opening Day addition . . . 

I wasn't really expecting to get my hands on a printing plate, but I was definitely going to make an effort to grab one if the opportunity arose. I wouldn't say this was a steal, but I justified it by thinking it will be the only printing plate I add for the rainbow.  

Every rainbow is unique, this one is one-of-a-kind! If you pull any Rosario parallels in your series 2, let me know, I will be happy to try to find something you'll like in exchange for it. Especially the /10 Acetate card. I'm still chasing that for my 2015 Kennys Vargas rainbow.... 

Little Big League - Rosie Rainbow style

Thanks to the tip from Top, I found out there was another 5x7 of Eddie from the Topps Heritage design, numbered to 49 copies, that will hang out with my Gold version /10.

This one I already knew about, the "mini" versions are all numbered to 100 copies.

For scale, here's the Big guy, the Little guy and the standard sized guy. The mini came in a holder that was labeled "Biggio" - that is going to bug me...

Ah, that's better. (Thanks again to Jon for having this one available for one of his free Fridays)

Last but not least I am never going to run out of Kennys Vargas items to chase, it seems - I had seen this on eBay for a long time, I finally gave in and bought it. This is a pocket schedule from the Single A Fort Myers Miracle, the Twins' affiliate in their spring training home of Ft. Myers, FL. This schedule even sports a signature from Lil Papi. ( I don't think anyone calls him Lil Papi anymore.. maybe David Ortiz? ).

Thanks for reading!

Saturday would have been Card Show Day

Buckle up, this post is going to get Rosier. There was a card show scheduled today here in the Twin Cities, but it was cancelled (May show is still on for now, but I suspect that too will be cancelled). The local Card shops in town are basically doing online sales only right now, which I think is perfectly reasonable and smart. I have added a few things recently buying online as a replacement for the monthly show. This post is pretty close to what I might pick up at a show if I attended in person.

If you are already sick of my Rosie Rainbow ravings, please scroll on down to Ichiro and start there. 

The release date of Bowman was pushed back, which has me wondering if series 2 will also be delayed. I am stretching my Rosie Rainbow muscles early on Topps Heritage. Rosario is one of the Twins' short prints, that one actually ended up costing more than the purple refractor after shipping. Chrome refractor, Silver refractor, White refractor. There's a gold refractor I missed out on (didn't want to pay $130 for it), and there's probably a 1/1 and printing plates out there too. I might call this Rosie rainbow "complete"

Oh, except there's also an online exclusive 5x7 numbered to 10 that I found. Added that too!

Ok, this is as Rosie as it is going to get! Josh Donaldson signed with Minnesota in the off-season, and this is pushing me even closer towards the 1974 Topps set build. His Throwback Thursday online exclusive features the underrated design. Rosie also had a Topps OnDemand Black and White card, an UTZ card, and GQ came out this week somehow, so I found the Gold Chrome parallel of Rosie for that set.

Ok! Here is something different. Jim from cards as i see them posted this one a while back and I was happy to add Ichiro's "sunset" card to my collection. He was creating a backlog of them with his 2018 comeback with the Mariners, then the 2019 Tokyo series that opened the season. He's probably actually retired now for real. I wouldn't be opposed to another cameo in the future though! Let him play whenever he wants like Minnie Miñoso!

I saw this card on Twitter and immediately grabbed a copy on eBay. This is the Topps 75-76 Seattle Supersonics team card, complete with 747 jet (not supersonic) and coach Bill Russell (definitely super)!

Speaking of team cards, I'm still working on the 1959 Topps set, and I have just two team cards to go, Pittsburgh and the Yankees. I picked up this Cleveland card with a couple of All-Stars

Specifically these two All-Stars!

Then I watched about 10 different Mantle auctions for this card for three weeks, and ended up doing a Buy It Now anyway for the best possible deal I could find. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn't win any of those auctions. Paid a little more than my highest bids were.

Willie Mays, widely regarded as one of the best to ever play the game, still criminally underrated and I picked this up for a fraction of what I spent to acquire Mickey Mantle. Not complaining, but that's messed up!

My favorite thing about these All-Star Cards are the cartoons on the back - Awesome! I think I prefer the back of Mazeroski's card to the front. I waited this long to get it just because I didn't like the photo selection. (similar to my 1961 Topps Killebrew holdout).

Go find the closest card shop (or your favorite one if you have options), find out if they sell online, and buy some cards from them if you have the means to do so this weekend! But above all, please take this thing seriously and stay safe. We'll all be back to the new normal eventually in the meantime everyone's health should be the number one concern.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

The Rosie Rainbow Quest Begins With "Opening Day"

Well well well - we might not have any baseball right now, but the thrill of the chase is still alive. This year, I am chasing a ROSIE RAINBOW so buckle up! Opening Day is a "budget" release, so the parallels don't get too crazy.

Here's a Red Foil parallel - "March 26, 2020" hey, there's an uncorrected error! (wail)

A Purple Parallel from Meijer.

The "official" Blue "Opening Day" parallel, which has a reported print run of 2020 copies.

It's not numbered, though, so we'll just have to take Topps' word for it!

Here's the rainbow so far! 2020 Topps series 2 is still currently scheduled to be released in June, I will be hunting all those pesky parallels, including the clear/acetate parallel numbered to just 10 copies!

Of course you may recall as regular readers of the blog my "White Whale" is a Clear Parallel of Kennys Vargas from 2015. That ship has sailed most likely, to mix a metaphor or two. But I did find this fun 5x7 of Vargas that was an online exclusive in 2015. This was part of a Twins team set, but I just grabbed the single off eBay for a few bucks. 

Willians Autographstudillo!

It's cold today, high didn't get above 20 degrees F. The "hot stove" is cooling off, too-- pitchers and catchers report next week. But card acquisitions can come any time of the year! Willians Astudillo was featured in almost every 2019 Topps product, reminiscent of a 2015 Kennys Vargas run of inserts and SSPs and photo variations and autographs.

The Topps Chrome auto came from eBay, and this Chrome refractor was purchased on Saturday at my local card shop (for maybe a little more than the national average price).

After seeing The Lost Collector reel in an awesome Luke Voit framed auto, I wondered if there were any Twins in that set . . . and of course Willians Astudillo was one of them!

Last but not least was this "sick hit" I found on eBay, and I actually paid less for this than the refractor auto. The card is numbered to just 35 copies! I don't know if Astudillo will even be on the opening day roster this year, but rest assured he will continue to have many fans in Twins Territory!

One More for the Road

A couple weeks ago I shared the various Japanese baseball cards I found of Kennys Vargas. When I made the post, I figured I would check the Japanese site Mint Mall one more time to see if there was anything new available. I found this insert card called "Fireworks".

The Card is numbered to 100 copies, so it was a just sheer dumb luck to find a copy of it available. I'm guessing there's a card of another Marines players with "EWO" at the top of the card, and a third with "RKS."