What eBay Hath Wrought 21: The Chronicles of Reddick

I have coveted this card since I first saw it. It is one of the short printed variations that fall out of packs at some ridiculous ratio, like 1:600 or 1:800. I don't even know. It's rare to find one. I was lucky enough to pull the Mark Reynolds out of bounds variation from Series 1 but my white whale, the R.A. Dickey SP from 2013 Opening Day, continues to elude me. But this shot of old Ginger Beard only cost me the $0.99 starting bid + shipping. I'd been searching it for a while, but finally found an auction that was closing at some weird hour and got it without any competition from other bidders.

One thing I noticed when I was scrolling through eBay today was a series of four Reddick cards in a row that had one thing in common; they all used the same picture of him on the front, although it might have been cropped a little differently or had some effects applied to the photo depending on the set. These weren't four parallels from the same product, they were four cards from different 2013 Topps products. In order, they were Topps Archives, Topps 1972 Mini Parallel, Allen & Ginter's Across the Years insert, and Bowman. It's like they took a page from this year's Jose Altuve book. You'd think that with the MLB license in effect Topps would have enough access to use photos or take photos in large enough quantity that each card of a player could feature a different photograph. It kind of makes me mad that I spend money on so much recycled product. Not mad enough to quit, I guess, but mad enough to devote a paragraph in a blog post to it.