This Fancy R.A. Dickey Card Belongs in a Museum

I've been struggling a bit with my motivation to write posts. I've got enough photos in my draft queue to get me into the first week or so of July, but those pictures need words to go with them. I am pretty busy at work lately with some training and certifications I have to finish. They've all got deadlines, so it all hangs over my head quite a bit. I've been trying to make progress on the classes in the evenings, because I need my work time to produce actual work. I have been able to watch some baseball, though, including most of the Astros' recent games. It's nice that they are actually doing some winning, moving closer to the teams currently holding Wild Card spots. There's still a ways to go, but they did at least get to .500 today with a win over the Angels.

The Toronto Blue Jays are another team vying for a Wild Card spot, and they are considerably closer than the Astros at this point. They're a half-game behind the Royals for the 2nd Wild Card spot, but they've lost three in a row to stay under the line. R.A. Dickey has pitched better recently, but his season numbers aren't all that great. I still pick up the occasional card for my Dickey collection, and when I saw these 2016 Topps Museum Collection Meaningful Material Prime Relics hit the market I knew I would be chasing one down. This is the Gold version of the card, numbered # 11 / 35. This is just a good-looking set, so I had to get a copy for my PC. It looks like the relic swatch might be a part of the sleeve trim on the jersey.

Here's the typical back-of-card stuff. I'm still trying to decide how much it matters if the player ever wore the relic embedded in a given card. I like the cards that somehow tie a piece of memorabilia to a game or event, like the recent Topps Strata release with the holographic stickers with codes that could be entered in to see which game the relic pieces came from. I never did actually pick up any Strata cards, but I did look up the codes from a few stickers just to see how it worked. I'll probably track something down from that product eventually. I don't think I would buy a box of Museum Collection because it is out of my price range and most boxes seem to be duds, but this R.A. Dickey card was a nice single to grab from eBay. I haven't really looked for any more Museum Collection cards from this year since I grabbed this card, but they look good enough that I might take a glance through the checklist to see if there are any other players I'd like to chase down.