Short, Parallel and Vintage

A pile of returns from the last Spring Cleaning entry. 

 

I had a lot of fun getting rid of cards last year in my prolonged "Spring Cleaning" event. I'm hoping to have something going again this year more along the lines of free group breaks that I've done in the past, although if I keep buying cards I'm going to end up having to do another spring cleaning by the time spring actually arrives.

The last person to sign up for the event was reader Randy, to whom I sent a box of cards from assorted Minnesota sports teams for his family to peruse. For whatever reason, there was a huge run on Twins cards last year, but I managed to scrape a few up to go along with some Timberwolves and Vikings. Randy responded in kind with a big, generous package of Cardinals goodies and set needs. I'll show off a few here, but realize that these aren't completely representative of everything I added to my collection.

For as much as people complained about the glut of cards in the '90s, it did bring forth a new era of surprisingly difficult parallels to collect. This one from the 1999 SkyBox Thunder set is a purple foil "Rant" parallel. I think there are also "Rave" parallels, because SkyBox liked a little crazy in their Thunder.

Speaking of crazy, what about a card made entirely of metal? I should keep a stack of these by my door at all times to ward off potential intruders. I can throw them like shuriken.

Not strictly limited to the '90s (or more recent), in the package were also number of vintage cards, including some big names like these!

As mentioned, there were also a bunch of set needs. We're not just talking about base cards, folks.

Even these aren't just base cards. They're star players appear on those pesky short printed cards that Heritage loves to throw at you. As much as it's easy to complain about 75 to 100 short printed cards in each Heritage set, at least they don't throw at you the escalating rarity tier like the cards they were originally inspired by. It would be maddening if each group of 100 or so cards was more rare than the next. If anyone doesn't understand how annoying this is, just go back and try to complete a full set of 2008 Upper Deck Timeline. I dare you!

To contrast with the above 2019 Heritage cards are these originals from the 1970 set. None of these are high numbers, however.

Lastly, here's a couple of famous historic people from the second Allen & Ginter revival set.

Thanks again to Randy and everyone who sent me cards in last year's huge Spring Cleaning campaign.