Night Owl is All About the Shiny

Surprisingly shiny stuff from @nightowlcards includes a batch of Redbird parallels. 

 

When most of us think of Night Owl Cards and baseball cards, the '70s immediately jump to mind. (Specifically 1975 and minis.) Imagine my surprise, then, when a bunch of sparkly new Cardinals fell out of an envelope I received back from the Dodgers enthusiast back in February.

I've never been one to desire to "chase the rainbow" (we should really call this "Skittlesing") because I consider myself a team collector before a player collector. The conundrum is that a team collector like me still feels the need to hoard every version of every card of every player in that certain uniform.

These red ice (or whatever... actually, Cardboard Connection lists these as "red foilboard" for some reason) cards are serial numbered to just 199 copies. I'm not sure if I've ever pulled one personally.

Topps uses that "ice" effect on their base cards and a similar effect on their fancy Chrome Sapphire sets (see below), but the way they name these parallel designs is maddeningly inconsistent. Panini also does a version of this, and a version of the same pattern you see on X-Fractor cards like Jon Lester here (Panini calls these "building blocks" at times.) It makes me wonder if anyone has any original ideas anymore.

Acquiring a Chrome Sapphire card is a fairly rare achievement these days. I'm always appreciative when someone sends me one out of the blue. Otherwise, I seem to end up with a few of the cheapest ones whenever possible, similar to how I've treated Topps Now cards over the years. I really have a hard time bringing myself to spend more than one dollar on any single card.

I don't think I've seen this particular parallel pattern out of Topps before, but it looks like something Panini has used quite a bit on certain Chronicles and Revolution cards. (Go back to Pacific Revolution to see its origins, I think.) I'm not sure if this was pack pulled or one of those factory set parallels that must drive rainbow chasers closer to the brink of card madness.
 

Of course, we also have the familiar Stadium Club parallels to contend with. At least these are usually easy to identify, with mostly a foil color change here (red, in this case) or a chromium finish there. I'm glad we got one last card of Adam Wainwright as a batter, now that pitchers mostly don't bat anymore.

We're finally back to familiar Night Owl ground here with this four-pack of Allen & Ginter minis. My stack of unsorted A&G minis is getting disturbingly big at the moment, which means it's probably time to do some more of that dreaded organizing soon.

Thanks again to Night Owl and everyone else who has sent me some interesting parallels over the years.