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.

Cards from The Lost Collector

Our favorite Yankees fan @Lost_Collector sends some Birds 'n Blazers. 

 

I finally busted out my Jack Flaherty shirt that I bought at Busch Stadium last summer yesterday, and Jack and co responded with a 2023 first: a series win. It's been a struggle so far in the young season for St. Louis, but hopefully the win over Colorado was a sign of better things to come.

This seemed like a good opportunity to show off a few things I received from The Lost Collector back around Christmas time. The holiday themed card would have made a seasonally appropriate post back when I first got these cards, but that is definitely a very busy time of the year.

It seems like Steven Matz has only been a Cardinal for a few months, but that's probably because he made 15 appearances with the team last season. He appears here on one of those gold-ish Topps cards that are becoming more and more difficult to come by as print runs spiral out of control.

A good chunk of the package was actually dedicated to basketball cards. I can always use more Bol Bol cards cards.

The Contenders Draft set gives us a throwback look at Dame Lillard.

This retail Absolute card of CJ McCollum gives us another glimpse of that awkward period where teams were playing in front of no fans.

We end things with a quad-pack of Bucks. All of these are Collector's Choice cards. The top two seem identical, but one of them is from the German set. There's also a nice "silver signature" parallel here.