Another beautiful and rare trifecta! 1999 Flair Showcase Legacy
The '99 Flairs are great, but the '97 Flair trifecta is even better! The middle one was on my want list forever. I had never even seen it for sale until earlier this year. I picked it up and loved it, but now that the other two were in one of the collections to go along with it, I love it even more!
Patches, a hat hole and batting glove!
Prime Patches are some of my favorites. Several of these have different serial numbering, depending upon if the patch is from the number, chest logo, nameplate, etc. IMO you can't have too many of them - the important part is the patch portion, so in my book, even doubles aren't doubles.
What kind of post would this be without some grail junk wax goodness?
Shown below is nearly 25% of the entire 2015 Topps Dynasty Run. I already had the 25th anniversary patch, and got back the top left green with the baseball patch recently as well. Some of my favorites!
These patches are extremely difficult to land ... here is a nice run of them!
If you thought rainbows with tons of parallels was a new thing, you would be wrong. Check out these 20+ year old rainbow runs from 1999 and 2000 Pacific Prism. WOW - the colors POP! These vary from fairly easy to find to seemingly impossible to find.
That last picture is shine overload, I get it. Many of them can stand on their own and make me drool. Here are 3 Prisms (including 1 from a previous set) that seem to go really well together.
These are all cards made of actual wood #/10, #/25, #/10 and #/25. I never thought I'd see these again. It is fun getting them, especially since 1987 featured a wood grain design!
These all refract beautifully - ranging from unnumbered to /5
I actually picked up the Red Crusade a few months back, but the green and purple are a welcome addition to complete the rainbow! The red is a grail card, in fact, it is widely considered as one of the three best cards produced in the 90s of Jose.
May 2015, I was in the car with my family and on the way to Jose Canseco's house. I had my eye on a very special card that I had never seen before. 2002 Leaf Certified Fabric of the Game. It was special because (I think) it is Jose's first auto patch card. Limited to just 10 copies, I was super excited about it. My eyes were on the auction winding down while I was in the passenger seat. I lost.
Five years later, I found out that Andrew was the winner - so now, it is mine! Here it is with a few other differently serial numbered patch cards from the same set!
Very few things get me as excited as older prototype cards. The left hand side is a 1998 Leaf Fractal Matrix Unreleased Gold Prototype. It came as a COMPLETE shock to me. I had never seen one, so I didn't even know it existed. It was just sitting very unassumingly in a sleeve. I nearly fell out of my chair!
To the right of it is a pack released beauty. The Diamond Axis. I already have the Executive Sample Prototype, but the one I noticed in going through the collection has something extra special going for it. It is # 33/50 - Jose's jersey number! I don't go hard on jersey numbered cards, however, I remember seeing this one several years ago thinking if I were to, this one would be it! I was unable to secure it. Unbeknownst to me, the exact 33/50 card was in one of the collections! Here is a picture of the two beauties together.
There are patch cards, and then there are PATCH cards. Landing any one of these from 2000-2001 Upper Deck is a treat. A card nearly 20 years old that is numbered to /25 is a pretty big deal, considering these are some of Jose's first patch cards. We may see /25 as relatively high numbered these days. To put it into perspective, the chance of landing a similar patch card to one of the other unnumbered patch cards shown below was 1 in every 7,500-10,000 packs! These could be considered by many to be centerpiece items! Black, White, Yellow, Green, Blue, Turquoise, Purple ... gahhh ... love the colors - and textures - of these patches!
The source of these four are all different. The first one was a trade, the second one was purchase from overseas which became the first sale I made when I opened up my collection to the public for sale. My good friend Jon ended up with it and sold it back to me back in 2018 if I recall correctly. The third and fourth were from Andrew's collection, though Andrew bought the fourth one from me to begin with. The first one is obviously my favorite, and it would not have happened had I not had good cards to trade! In fact, Andrew actually had the exact patch card Jon hoped to get back in his collection, so thanks to this deal, he was able to get it back!
The card I pleaded with Matt about the most to trade back to me over the years was the one in the middle: The 1998 Donruss Preferred Prized Collections. Its story actually begins 5 years ago when I purchased a large collection it was in. I didn't think much about it, and even mislabeled it on my website. I didn't even realize I had a rarity until a year or two into having it! With a print run of 55, it is pretty much perfect. It is hard for non 90's enthusiasts to understand how big this card actually is. I've only seen it up for sale a couple of times. In fact, during the deal I was making with Matt, a former set collector of these sold out his collection. He spent 20 years tracking down nearly all of them, and told me Canseco was one of the few he could never find. It was a card that didn't mean much to me the first time I had it. Now that I have it a second time, it has never shined brighter!
The card on the right is sneaky. Super sneaky. In fact, I didn't even remember it having much shine and nearly dealt it away AGAIN before it came back to me. I decided to hold off selling it for a second time *just in case* it had a refractor finish. Sure enough - it did! Emblazoned on the back in big, black letters is "SAMPLE". Like the middle card, it didn't mean much to me the first time I picked it up, but after doing some research, it is apparent to me that it just might be rarer than the card in the middle! Both cards are in my wheelhouse - extreme rarity matched only by their extreme beauty. The card on the left is not rare - it is just there as eye candy to complete the trio since it is in the same run.
Have you ever looked at a rainbow/set and decide from the outset that it is simply impossible? That describes this run - 2000 Topps Tek Gold #/10. I had 15 of the 20. I paid good money to get these into my collection the first time, and sold them all to Matt. If Matt's collection was a pot of gold, this would quite literally be the gold that shines brightest. While they were in Matt's care, he added the red, and when I got them back, I was able to trade for the yellow. I am three away from the entire run - if you have any, please let me know!
Now that I have successfully eaten up all of your bandwidth, I should probably wrap this up. There are so many more noteworthy cards not shown, so I'll finish up with one final graphic that includes a number of my favorites from both supercollections. Included are a letter patch that I've been wanting to get for a couple of years, three 1/1s that were initially mine, Grand Finale, Super Rave, a Material Ink auto patch that I tried extremely hard to pick up a few years ago from another seller, but failed (literally the exact same one!) and most notably for me, my favorite button card, ever. I had to trade BIG for it, but the trade simply would not have happened had I not been able to use cards from these collections.
In my entire collecting "career", I have never experienced acquiring such depth of exciting cards in this amount of time. It doesn't get any better than this for me. So many mysteries have been solved, runs completed, regrets of selling some cards have been washed away, and a number of trade opportunities have opened up! I sold a number of rarities from Matt's collection, and thankfully, Andrew had copies of many of them as well, so what may have been a regret turned out to be several bullets dodged.
Taking the pictures shown above took a lot of time, but I had a TON of fun doing it - I may even consider taking pictures of pretty looking cards a hobby!
FINAL THOUGHTS
These past couple years since I sold off my supercollection have been a great time of learning and gaining experience. Getting back into collecting without the need for everything has made me truly appreciate beautiful cards that may not be rare. An unnumbered refractor means so much more to me now that it isn't just a chore getting one to check it off the list. In doing so, even the bigger cards are that much more rewarding for me as well, and as you can see, I now have a lot.
If you have read my book, you may recall that I was contemplating buying out a massive collection, but decided not to, which ultimately ended in me selling off my own collection. It is funny how things have come full circle, but I am so glad they did. I'm having so much more fun now in this hobby than I ever have, and I think the key to it all was not trying to have it all, and focusing only on cards that I love.
It has been a few weeks since I've closed these deals, but am STILL super excited/joyful/grateful for them. Matt and Andrew, thank you for allowing me to be the home for your extremely impressive collections. You both built something to be proud of, and I couldn't be happier.