Rainbow in the Dark 39: Neil Magny 2017 Topps Chrome

I haven't posted any UFC cards in over a month, so I thought I'd share a bit of a rainbow I worked on from 2017 Topps UFC Chrome. This is a product I liked a lot, and I opened several boxes of it. I also bought into a few group breaks for specific fighters and picked up quite a few cards on the secondary market.

One of the fighters I follow is Neil Magny. I like him because he fights frequently and is a pretty good all-rounder. He is also in the National Guard, which is something I identify with, as I will reach 18 years in the Army National Guard this month. I was able to gather most of Magny's cards from Chrome. I don't have scans of the base card or the base Refractor, but I have many, many copies of them both. This first one is the Diamond Refractor, which comes one per pack in a Hot Box, which falls one per case.

Next up is the X-fractor, which is a 1:24 pack pull, or one per box. Chrome is coming back for 2018, and I really should get some boxes on order. The release date is in mi-July for that.

The next tier of rarity is the Green Refractor, which is limited to 99 copies. The one I've scanned here is numbered  # 98 / 99. I think I've got a handful of these, but maybe only a couple.

Next up is the Blue Wave Refractor, which is limited to 75 copies apiece. This one is # 10 / 75. Around the time the 2018 set releases, the UFC will be coming to Boise for a Fight Night event. I am going to try to get tickets for that, as I've never been to a live UFC event. Two fighters whose cards I collect, Cat Zingano and Liz Carmouche, have already been announced for that card.

I love me some Gold parallels, and 2017 Chrome had them. This Magny Gold Refractor is numbered # 25 / 50.

The Orange Refractors are twice as rare as the Golds, with 25 copies printed of each card. My copy is  # 21 / 25. After the Orange Refractors come the Black Refractors, with a print run of only 10 copies apiece. I haven't found one for Magny yet, and for all I know they are all still sitting out there in packs somewhere. The Black Refractors can be easy to miss, because most of the cards have a dark background anyway. I pulled one in a box and almost missed it until I checked the back of the cards.

The Red Refractors are nearly indistinguishable from the Orange ones, except for the serial numbering on the back. My copy is # 3 / 5.

The Superfractor is the # 1 / 1 card that you really want from a Chrome product, but so far I have to settle for the Black Printing Plate. It would be nice to pick up the Superfractor and the other printing plates, but we'll see if they pop up for sale. With the low-numbered cards in a rainbow, you are at the mercy of the market. Someone has to pull the card and list it for sale, or you will never see it.

Rainbow in the Dark 38: Wa(i)vering Enthusiasm

The Astros have continued to make moves in an effort to bolster a roster that took a step back in 2016 after a promising playoff run in 2015. A couple of those moves will have some kind of effect on my player collections. First baseman/designated hitter Jon Singleton was placed on waivers a couple of days ago, dropping him from the 40-man roster. He will probably be relegated to AAA, and this is a sign that the team might be ready to move on from him completely. There is still a chance that he could play for the Astros in the future, or that another team might show interest in him. It's hard to remember that he is still pretty young, so he might yet pull it together. He hasn't had a lot of cardboard recently, though, so most of my Singleton additions have been parallels from base Topps sets or filling in holes from older releases.

I don't know for certain, but this Pink parallel from 2015 Topps Series Two might be the last non-1/1 card I needed for the 2015 rainbow. It is numbered # 30 / 50. There could be variations still missing from my collection, but I know I've got most of them, including minis, 5x7's, online-exclusives, and all the packed-out parallels.

I saw the other day that this year Topps has released special holiday parallels with snowflakes where the corner 'fog' in the 2016 design would go. I gathered a few of Singleton's 2016 parallels, but there are so many out there. I'm glad I didn't make it my quest to get the full-blown rainbow of his 2016 base issue. I guess there is still time to go for it, but even from 2015 to 2016 it seems there was a large jump in the number of hard-to-get variations, with a great many of them exclusive to one retailer or only available as part of a complete set purchase on the Topps website. Instead of chasing them all, I have given the whole thing a miss unless something cool pops up in my (cheap) price range.

The seller on the Singleton card included a stack of 2015 Topps Football cards as packaging. I haven't really kept up with football cards lately, so it was interesting to look at the card designs and players. I probably wouldn't normally have scanned these, but when I purchased this Singleton card there wasn't much news about him on the airwaves and I thought I would need some post filler.

The design is pretty busy on these. It took me a while to figure out what was going on with those numbers on the front of some cards, as they didn't match jersey numbers. It turns out they are part of a subset called Topp 60, which I presume is some attempt at ranking the top sixty players in the league.

Here are the backs of some cards. You can see the Topp 60 write-ups on some of them. It's a cool idea. It's a subset that I would enjoy collecting if football cards were more of a thing for me. I imagine the Topp 60 is heavily weighted toward the marquee offensive positions, without many linemen or defensive players on the checklist. You have to go where the collector money is, and that usually means quarterbacks, wide receivers, running backs, and the occasional great tight end or J.J. Watt-caliber defender.

Rainbow in the Dark 37: A Real eBay 1/1, Part 1 (of 2)

I kind of disappeared there for a few days. I flew home from Ohio late last week, and at some point my wife informed me that the air conditioning in the house had gone out. Our neighbor knew a guy, and the guy came and looked at it, and he said something along the lines of, "Well, you're $%*^ed!" The good news is that it's under warranty. The bad news is that the replacement parts are taking their time to get here, so the house is hot. Luckily we had a camping trip scheduled for the weekend, so we were up in the mountains with some relatively nice weather for a couple of days. But we eventually had to come home, and it's pretty warm here. The heat makes it difficult to want to do much, so I haven't done much scanning or post-writing. It's getting close to end-of-year where I work, too, and I am expecting to be at work just about every day between now and the end of September. So posts are probably going to be intermittent for the next few weeks.

I had pretty much put the 2014 Topps High Tek Jon Singleton rainbow to bed last December when I acquired the last non-1/1 card I needed, and I didn't really expect to find the various 1/1 variations this long after the product's release. Well, one of the 1/1 cards popped up on eBay and I hit the Buy It Now about as fast as I could once I spotted it. But that's not even the coolest part of this story. I'll get to the cool part later. First, the card I purchased.

This is the Black Printing Proof, which is one of the four Printing Plate equivalents in the set. There is also a Charcoal Diffractor 1/1 parallel out there somewhere. I think I remember seeing it on eBay at some point and missing out on it, though. Anyway, I was pretty happy to finally land a 1/1 for this particular rainbow. Getting the black plate/proof is usually pretty good, as it tends to have the clearest picture on it.

A little after I made my payment I got an eBay message from the seller. He asked me if I was the writer of The Raz Card Blog, as he recognized my name and location from reading some blog posts of mine about a player collection we have in common. He mentioned that if he had guessed correctly, he had some cards of that player he'd like to pass along. After a couple of messages back and forth he mentioned that he's also added a couple of Astros to the package. Unfortunately he doesn't have a blog that I can direct you to, but he said he has traded with a few bloggers who have me in their blogrolls. I'll revisit the cards he sent for our player collection in common later, but here are the Astros he added to the package. Remember, the only card I actually bought was the one at the top of the post. The rest of this stuff is pure generosity.

First up is this Clouds Diffractor parallel of Singleton's 2014 Topps High Tek card. This is a card I already had a copy of, but how can you dislike a shiny rare acetate baseball card of a player you collect? This one is numbered # 14 / 25.

This is a Black Mini parallel of Jason Castro, who is still on the team. I keep thinking that he is going to be replaced someday, but the other people Houston brings in as competition for the spot always seem to be even worse. He does enough with his defense to make up for some pretty streaky offense. This card is numbered # 170 / 199.

This is a Camo parallel of Chris Carter from 2013 Topps Series 2. These are pretty cool, although the camo colors clash horribly with the rest of the card. Carter has a lot of power in his bat, but he also has a lot of whiff in it. He is currently leading the NL in strikeouts while in a tie for 3rd in home runs for his new team, the Milwaukee Brewers. This parallel is numbered # 10 / 99.

This card of Lucas Harrell shares the same design as the Chris Carter, but it's a little smaller in size, being a Gold parallel from the 2014 Topps Mini release. It's numbered # 27 / 62. He's been bouncing around a bit over the last couple of years, spending time in the minors and majors with Arizona, Detroit, Atlanta, and Texas, where he is currently playing on the big league roster.

Coming back to 2014 Topps High Tek, here is the base version of George Springer's card. Springer is one of the Astros' young stars, putting up decent numbers over the last couple of years. The team as a whole has been struggling lately. A couple of weeks ago they were right in the thick of the Wild Card race and had a higher Postseason Probability than even the Division-leading Rangers. Now they have fallen behind the Mariners and have a Postseason Probability of 14%. There is still a fair amount of season left, but they need to be winning more games.

Last up for this portion of the package is this 2014 Bowman Chrome Green Refractor, also featuring George Springer. This one is numbered # 64 / 75 and features a nice shiny border.

That was a lot of cool cardboard (and acetate), but that's not even close to half of it. There is still the matter of the player collection cards for the as-yet-unrevealed athlete. This part of the package was pretty darn exciting, but that part of the package absolutely blew me away. I wasn't sure what to expect when the seller mentioned that he wanted to send me some PC cards, but I simply wasn't prepared for the card bomb he dropped on me. It may be a few days and a few posts before I get to Part 2 of this post, but I'll get to it. I still have a lot of research to do, as many of the cards he sent are from a time when I was out of collecting and/or still really focused on basketball cardboard. I am super-grateful for all of thise cards, though. That eBay seller really knocked me down with his kindness and generosity, just because he recognized my name and location from my Blogger profile.

Rainbow in the Dark 36: Josh Reddick 2013 Topps Printing Plate

I've been working on a Josh Reddick 2013 Topps 'Super Rainbow' for a long time. I call it a Super Rainbow because Topps used the same picture for his 2013 Topps Series 1 card, his 2013 Topps Opening Day card, his 2013 Topps Chrome card, and his 2013 Topps Mini card. I've been trying to track down all of the different variations, and I have everything except for a number of 1 / 1 variations. The last time I added to this collection was in November 2014, when I got the Magenta Printing Plate out of 2013 Topps Chrome. That post I linked to also has a big row of scans showing everything I'd collected for the Super Rainbow to that point.

That Magenta plate was the 38th variation in my collection, and this Cyan Printing Plate from 2013 Topps Series 1 is the 39th. The blue plate was up on eBay for quite a while at a price that I thought was about 3x what my top-end for it would be. After a couple of months the seller dropped the price gradually down to about 2x my top-end price and then never came down any further. Eventually I broke down and paid up for the card because I 'needed' it for this Super Rainbow. It's interesting that you can see ghost images of other card fronts on here, including a recognizable Braves logo.

After this addition I am down to needing just four cards from 2013 Topps Series 1 (Platinum 1 / 1, Black PP, Magenta PP, Yellow PP), four cards from 2013 Topps Opening Day (all four PPs), three cards from 2013 Topps Chrome (Magenta PP, Cyan PP, Yellow PP), and five from 2013 Topps Mini (Platinum 1 / 1 and all four PPs). There also may be some Blank Back Topps Vault cards out there, but they were sold on eBay as opposed to being sold in packs, so I won't count those unless I am able to acquire them. Every card I need is a 1 / 1, so I am kind of at the mercy of fate as far as when or if those individual copies pop up. I guess that means there are still 16 pack-inserted variations out there, which seems like a lot, but when you consider that only one copy of each exists it makes sense to consider the rainbow pretty much completed. I will still keep an eye out for the rest of the cards, and I especially hope to grab at least one 1 / 1 card from Opening Day and Topps Mini so that I can have a 1 / 1 representative from each set.

Rainbow in the Dark 35: Some More 2015 Singletons

I've picked up a large number of Jon Singleton's 2015 Topps parallels, to the point where I am pretty much admitting to chasing the rainbow of the card. I don't have the 1 / 1 stuff, but I have nearly everything else including the stuff from the mini and 5x7 sets. Some of the cards I was missing, however, were the serially-numbered parallels in the middle tiers (Snow Camo, Pink, and Black). This past week I was able to knock two of those off the list.

This is the Snow Camo parallel. I honestly don't have much to say about it. Singleton is currently battling for a spot on the Astros roster, but I think he might wind up back in AAA. He's one of those Quad-A guys who seems to really pour it on when he's on the AAA club, but can't buy a hit at the major league level. I keep hoping that he will figure it out, but I wonder how long his leash is with all the depth the team has at the moment. This parallel is # 34 / 99.

And here is the Black parallel. I picked them both up on eBay. There have been a few Buy It Now listings that pop up for these cards, but those crazy folks have been wanting $10-20 for these things. I am a player collector, but I'm not 100% dumb. These ones popped up for a few dollars each after shipping and I got them. The Black parallel isn't perfect. It's got a fair bit of white chipping around the border. I'm calling it good enough for my collection. It's numbered # 52 / 64. The Pink parallel still eludes me, but I'll either track it down someday or I won't.

The new Out of the Park 17 game came out today for people who pre-ordered it. I downloaded it and gave it a whirl. I like it pretty well so far, but I am still having difficulty getting used to the interface, which seems to have changed a lot more from 16 to 17 than it did from 15 to 16. I played through the 2016 season with the Astros. I traded for Adrian Gonzalez much too easily and when he started sucking the Diamondbacks gave up Paul Goldschmidt much too easily. With all those first basemen around I eventually traded Jon Singleton away for a relief pitcher, since I had some pitchers get injured. Pretty bad when you don't even keep your own PC guys around in a video game. It was pretty fun, but when I tried to start the playoffs the game crashed and I lost my whole season since I forgot to set up the auto-save feature. Maybe I'll try again another day.

Rainbow in the Dark 34: More 2015 Topps Jon Singletons that Look the Same

I picked up a few more different parallels from 2015 Topps, but on the screen they mostly look exactly the same as his standard base card. This first one is the over-sized Topps 5x7 card that was sold on the Topps.com website. I believe these were sold in team set form, but I could be wrong on that. I just picked this single up from eBay. This one is numbered # 15 / 99.

This card looks a little different from the regular base card in the scan, as it's got a bit of foil to it. A cursory search of the internet tells me that this parallel came in a 5-card pack distributed inside of Hobby-only factory sets. My copy is numbered # 032 / 179.

This card is not serially-numbered and appears pretty much identical to Singleton's base card. It comes from the 2015 Topps Limited set, which is a 'premium' factory set sold on the Topps website for about twice the price of a regular factory set. It is printed on thicker card stock and I believe it swaps out the standard silver foil for gold foil. I have to say I thought the card would be a bit thicker than it was, but you can kind of see the difference in thickness if you hold a base card and this card up next to each other. Future parallel collectors are going to hate these cards. On the Future Stars cards the difference in foil color is more readily visible, but on regular base cards it will just be the logo. These are not serially-numbered, but I think the stated print run for the sets was around 1000. As of this writing the full sets are still available on the site. As with the rest of these cards, I just got the singles I needed from eBay.

I think this about does it for my collection of Singleton's parallels from 2015 Topps. The thing that stinks is that I have a lot of the really hard-to-find ones outside of # 1 / 1 cards and I have most of the unnumbered stuff and numbered stuff with print runs of 99 or more, but I don't have the middle cards like the Snow Camo # / 99, the Black # / 64. ad the Pink # / 50. There are a couple of the Pink parallels on eBay right now with exorbitant Buy It Now prices on them, but I kind of backed into this rainbow and missed the prime window when these things were probably available all over the place. If any of them pop up I'll probably make an attempt at them, but I'm not going to make myself nuts going after them.

Check Out My Cards 7: Some Easy Topps Parallels

I mentioned before that I have inadvertently collected much of Jon Singleton's 2015 Topps rainbow, grabbing up many of the rarer parallels as the year went on. This latest COMC order was a good opportunity for me to pick up some of the more common parallels in the rainbow, something I had neglected to do thus far as I was not consciously chasing every variation of the card. This first one is the Rainbow Foil variation, which I believe is usually packed out at around the same rate as the Gold parallel but is not serially-numbered.

And this is the Gold parallel. This copy is numbered # 1626 / 2015. There wasn't a lot of other stuff available for Singleton from 2015 Topps, so these two cards were all I came away with from this purchase. I don't know what Singleton's status will be for the 2016 season. He had a pretty good 2015 in the minor leagues, but the numbers didn't carry over to his stints on the big-league roster. Most of the press out there seems to focus on how the Astros can avoid playing him by acquiring a third baseman and moving Luis Valbuena to first base. For now, his cards are relatively affordable and I'll keep picking them up when I can.