A Grail Card, and a Really Nice Bonus Card

I've mentioned this card on my blog a few times over the years as one that I really wanted to add to my collection, but I never thought I had a realistic shot at obtaining it. This copy of it has been on eBay for a few months, and the price has slowly gone down to the point where I finally jumped on it and bought it.

The card in question is this 2010 Press Pass Showcase Classic Collections Ink Fan Favorites autograph card featuring the signatures of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Danica Patrick, Jeff Gordon, and Tony Stewart. There are a couple parallel versions of this card. My copy is the Gold parallel, numbered # 02 / 10. The card is acetate, so the signatures are all on clear plastic windows. I wasn't really chasing a graded version of the card, but this one happened to be graded. I think the autographs got a 9 because Jeff Gordon's 'J' slips off the card a bit. I am just happy to land this card, which I've been drooling over for a long time.

From the back you can see the signature windows and the printed areas. It's kind of crazy to think that these drivers are all retired now. What a lineup of names, though!

This card was the bonus card that came in the lot. I would have bought the autograph anyway, but I'm not going to complain about a patch card featuring the same four drivers. I have a couple other similar cards featuring sheet metal swatches, but this is my first Classic Collections Firesuit card from 2010 Press Pass Showcase. This is the Melting parallel, numbered # 3 / 5, and featuring rainbow holofoil to distinguish it from the base version. Those patches are sweet.

Here's the back of the card, with the same pictures as you see on the front, as well as a ton of logos and legalese.

It's not often that you add a true white whale to your collection, and I was very happy when this package arrived safely in the mail. I paid less for the quadrograph than I thought I would have to, and it jumps right to the top as far as NASCAR cards in my collection. The patch memorabilia card ranks up there, too, and it was really just a throw-in on the deal.

Quadzilla NASCAR Relic: Earnhardt Jr., Patrick, Gordon, Stewart

I picked up this card in March. I already had a more limited version of the card that I got in early 2014, but at the price this one surfaced for I couldn't let it go. It features sheet metal relics from four of my favorite NASCAR drivers' cars, with a nice variety of colors and some good paint scrapes on the Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart swatches. The other two featured drivers are Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. This copy of the card is numbered # 79 / 99.

The set this card comes from is 2010 Press Pass Showcase, and the insert is named Classic Collections Fan Favorites. I still think it's a shame that Press Pass closed up shop and left the NASCAR license without a card producer. There is plenty of the older stuff out there on eBay so it's not like I am hurting for cards to chase, but as a card collector I do like to have new things to see and chase. A lot of the eBay stuff now is the overpriced Buy It Now auctions that have been cycling for the last three years with no change in the price tag.

I haven't sat down to watch a NASCAR race in a couple of months, but I do follow the races as they progress on the NASCAR.com leaderboard tracker. Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon seem to be struggling a lot this year. It's a shame especially for Gordon as this is his farewell tour before retirement. He's still just inside the Chase for the Cup playoff field, so he might be able to salvage a good end to the season with some strong runs in the last third of the season. Danica Patrick has shown fairly stead improvement year over year, but hasn't made the big jump where she is a week-to-week threat to win a race. She is more like a week-to-week threat to break into the Top 15, with finishes between 20th and 27th place being the expectation. Earnhardt Jr. is squarely in the top half of the Chase field with a couple of wins and plenty of Top 5 / Top 10 finishes on the year.

This is a super cool card to get. I like these multiple relic cards for NASCAR drivers, although they usually come with a price tag that matches their awesomeness. It's especially nice because if I had to pick four drivers to appear on a card, these would be the ones I'd choose. It's like Press Pass read my mind three years before I got back into card collecting. This one slipped through at a discount, maybe because the seller was trying to clear some stuff out or because it's got some rough corners. I think if the seller had put it out for auction rather than Buy It Now it might have fetched double what I paid for it. At least that's what I tell myself.