Rainbow in the Dark 18: Derek Holland of the Texas Ovaries

I added a pile of cards to my 2014 Bowman Derek Holland rainbow. In a perfectly-ordered world I would have put them into this post in some rational order like least rare to most rare or where they fall in relation to each other on a color wheel or something, but instead I just put them in the order in which they were stacked on my desk. This first one is the Silver parallel, numbered # 39 / 75. I have to admit that the border colors on this year's Bowman parallels feel a little flat, but I don't recall the colors from last year's base set being that much more vibrant. I think I must have all of the Refractors from the Bowman Chrome release stuck in my head from last year as the root of that impression. Probably once this year's Bowman Chrome set comes out I will begin to see this year's rainbows as being just as colorful as last year's cards.

This is the Black parallel, which is limited to 25 copies. The one I got was # 07 / 25. One thing I like about this card over Holland's 2013 Topps card is that it features his sleazy mustache, which I believe he has since removed from his face.

I was able to secure the blank-back # 1 / 1 from the Topps Vault's eBay money machine. It's got the 1 / 1 sticker complete with hologram (counterfeit-proof!) and serial number, it's embossed with the Topps Vault logo, encased in plastic and sealed with a Topps Vault sticker...

...and it has a matching certificate of authenticity! So I do have a # 1 / 1 card for the Holland rainbow, but as it isn't something you can actually pull from packs I think it is excluded from true 2014 Bowman # 1 / 1 status and instead is in the category of 'related collectibles' or something. I don't know. I make up these rules on the fly.

Moving back toward the other end of the spectrum from # 1 / 1 discussion, we have the Orange parallel, which is numbered to # 241 / 250. Pretty fancy stuff. The one thing I still don't like about Bowman is the team logo placement / photo alignment. The team logos always seem to be planted somewhere in the crotch region. This can be especially embarrassing in certain scenarios. I believe last year David Ortiz had an interesting pair of dangling Red Sox. If you moved Derek Holland a couple inches to the left it would look like the Texas 'T' was a diagram of the female reproductive system printed on the front of his pants. 

And finally I've got the Gold parallel, which is # 17 / 50. There are still quite a few Holland parallels that I don't have, but this covers a good portion of the more common ones. I think I recently got his base card, too, which is an important but often overlooked part of the rainbow.