Sometimes I pick up a card and it's more because of the card itself than the player depicted on the card. Usually it's because the card has a cool gimmick or some kind of novelty value, but the relevant checklist either doesn't have one of my PC players on it or my PC players' cards are prohibitively expensive / not readily available.
This was one of those cards for me. I don't collect Kennys Vargas, but I thought these Coin and Stamp cards from 2015 Topps were pretty cool. I don't remember exactly how I came across this card, but I was searching for something else and saw this one listed at a price that seemed pretty low. I put in a bid to see what would happen. It helped that the auction description was extremely spare, featuring the card number and player name without much other information. I thought maybe a player collector would find the card and outbid me, but it never happened. This is a 2015 Topps Series 2 Birth Year Coin and Stamp card of Twins prospect Kennys Vargas. I don't know if he's still considered a prospect because he's got 111 MLB games under his belt over two seasons, but I don't know what else to call him.
Here's the back of the card. While the stamp is in a little picture-box window, the coin is encapsulated in a little plastic holder so you can't actually touch it. With each of these cards being serially-numbered to 50 copies, I wonder how many hours Topps' employees spent sorting through piles of loose change to find coins from specific years? This one is # 22 / 50 for Vargas. There are other version featuring other coins (quarters, nickels, and pennies) as well as a truncated autograph checklist with embedded quarters and stamps. I probably won't be chasing anything else from this set, as I just wanted the one card as an example for my collection.
This is definitely a unique concept and I do not doubt that Topps employees were literally emptying their pockets on the table in search of the properly dated coins. It makes for a neat little blend of three popular hobbies.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like you can get lots of dimes from a specific year on eBay pretty cheap. I found lots of 50 dimes from 1990 for about 34 cents apiece and lots of 40 quarters for about 64 cents each. In the end that's (probably) cheaper than having employees sift through piles of unsorted coins.
DeleteIt seems like the stamps might have been more difficult to source for a given birth year, although depending on the year you could probably buy them by the sheet and cut them up.
Very cool, especially as I also collect both coins and stamps. But it would drive me absolutely nuts to have that card with the dime being put in there like that, without seemingly any care to make it upright.
ReplyDeleteI collected coins and stamps when I was younger, stamps especially. I still think they are interesting, but other things eventually pushed them to the back. I will buy a silver coin here and there, but that's about it for me now.
DeleteI tried to shake the card a bit to see if the coin would rotate around. It's pretty tight in the capsule, so I didn't make any progress on that front.
Kudos to Topps for thinking outside the box. Great card.
ReplyDeleteIt is a pretty cool card. I'm glad I was able to get a coin / stamp card for my collection.
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