Finally! - A Finished Masterpiece

In my last post I teased that I had reached a major colecting milestone.  Well, a couple months back I finally tracked down the last 2 short prints (Cal Ripken and Mike Schmidt) I needed to complete the full 120 card set of 2008 UD Masterpieces Baseball:

I was proud to have finally finished it off, both because I really love the set and because this was the set that got me back into collecting.  I bought a few packs on a whim one day, I liked them so much that I decided to buy a whole box, and then before I knew it I was online blogging and talking to all of you!

However, that isn't the milestone.  The big news is my acquisition of this card:

Why is Mr. Longoria such a big deal?  Here's why:

Evan was the final piece.  For the first time in my collecting life, I have actually completed an entire parallel set!  Of all the different colors of frames UD used as parallels for this set I think the black ones look the best - the dark color really makes the gold foil jump off the cards. 

Hopefully one day I can fulfill my dream of having a "rainbow" set of all the Griffey parallels from this set (he has TWO base cards, mind you).  There are no less than TEN parallel sets with different color frames - Black (unnumbered), Red (unnumbered), Navy Blue (#ed to 125), Brown (100), Green (75), Blue (50), Silver (25), Gold (10), Light Blue (5) and Red (1).  Thus far I have the Black, Navy Blue, Brown and Green parallels for Griffey's short print card (#99 in the set), and I have the Black, Red and Brown parallels for the other Griffey (#52 in the set).  I'm still kicking myself for not grabbing the Gold parallel of #99 off of eBay when I had the chance.  The guy listed it for $100 or best offer, and even though I was pretty broke at the time I offered $60.  He countered with $80 and I ultimately had to pass.  Stupid "responsibilities"....