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. 

Winning on eBay

Sometimes, it is a fun game to pick the low hanging fruit, other times you want to strike quickly.

 I won all of these with the filters of "Free Shipping" and number of bids "0" - I sort the list by lowest price, then pick my max bid (under a buck for each of these) and just wait it out. I win a little less than half the time, but the bargains, friends, the bargains.

 Here's a fun little oddball

 Coca Cola and Sonic team up to bring us the Minnie. I hadn't heard that Mickey and Minnie factoid before, that's neat.

 I actually lost this auction, but the seller had a second copy and offered it to me to Buy Now for the max bid I entered. SOLD.

 Pedro had just started his dominance there - 82 Ks in 77 innings? The best is yet to come...

 This one was not an auction at all - I was looking for the Kennys Vargas version of this card, but Perkins was on sale for $15. I snapped it up real quick.

It's the first Topps Clear in my collection, and I agree with everyone else that has stated that these are probably the coolest parallels that Topps puts out.