What eBay Hath Wrought 66: Acetate Press Pass Showroom

I couldn't come up with a catchy name for this post, but these cards have been sitting in my draft queue for way too long. I am pretty sure they are made of clear acetate, but I couldn't locate them this evening to make sure. Part of the reorganizing process was to take all the cards out of the 5000-count boxes and pile them up on my desk in wobbly, precarious piles. As cards get sorted and cataloged, they get put back into the boxes by set. But the uncataloged cards exist in a nebulous between-state that is quite prone to being knocked over and scattered, generally in the hard-to-reach zone behind the desk, where recovery efforts usually result in further cardboard avalanches. But someday I will locate these two cards again and verify the materials used to construct them.

I think that top silver card is the base version, and the one on bottom is a gold parallel. The checklist for 2012 Press Pass Showcase tells me that the only other regular Showroom card is a Melting parallel that is a 1 / 1. There are also Memorabilia variations that are numbered out of # / 99, # / 50, and # / 5. All of them are priced out of my current personal range, if they are even available. These are pretty cool cards, and I always like seeing the actual cars on trading cards.

Danica has been having a pretty rough season so far in 2014, but not appreciably worse than other folks in her tier, that being the crowd of drivers who dwell week-to-week in the 20th-25th place range. She's had a couple of Top 20 finishes and a couple of runs at the back of the pack, but I don't know if she will put it all together this year. She is currently 29th in the point standings. It's too bad for me that her card prices don't necessarily track with her race finishes. It can be hard to find bargains for this particular player collection.

My other favorite drivers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart, have been having different years. Dale Jr. has been running really well, finishing in the top few repeatedly. I think he is currently 4th in the points standings. Tony Stewart has been up and down, with some pretty bad finishes and some Top 10 finishes. I think he is currently 12th in points. It would be nice to see Dale Jr. compete for and win a Championship this year. There's still a lot of racing to go, though, so we will see what happens.