One Man's Thoughts on Sports Card Collecting

Showing posts with label 2008 UD Masterpieces. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 UD Masterpieces. Show all posts

Monday, March 5, 2012

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"....