Since 2010 I've been collecting short prints and on the rare occasion the dreaded super short prints as part of my yearly Topps Reds team sets. With the exception of about 3 or 4 cards, I've been able to diligently acquire those photo variations or veteran cards to my collection without any issues. This year, however, is a different story. When I read that Topps (Fanatics) decided to release a super short print of every base card that's included in this year's set I knew that this was too much. Take the above Joey Votto card. I've seen that card listed for about $140 on eBay. Lesser Reds I've seen for $40 or more. Just to track down those gold photo ssp cards and add them to my collection would cost me at least $500 or more. No thanks Topps. You've officially entered the realm of Arthur Fonzarelli on waterskis jumping over aquatic predators. I've acquired the Reds base cards I need from this year's flagship release thus far and I'm content. Who knows, 2022 might have been the last year that I was chasing short prints. If that's the case then I can finally put those short print funds to chasing down the last of the vintage Reds cards I'm pursuing for my collection.
4 comments:
I just read about the much tougher odds on short prints over on Night Owls blog about 15 minutes ago. As much as it stinks for player and team collectors... I was actually happy to hear they went in this direction. Over the past two decades, parallels and inserts have flooded commons boxes and the past few years one of my biggest hobby wishes was to pull something from a pack that was actually worth celebrating. If I pull a Votto that sells for triple digits... I'd definitely be celebrating.
I agree with you Fuji. Topps made way too many parallels and inserts. It seemed like every time you opened a pack of cards half of the cards in the pack were inserts or what not. I guess the big problem I have now is that they're short printing the entire set and making short prints a parallel set of their own. I can understand a card or two, but not the entire set.
I stopped trying to chase down SPs of my team around 2016 or so. It was ridiculous then. But the pain in the butt thing will be when updating my 2023 team set on TCDB and having to skip over all those SP check boxes in the team list, I guess there should be a separate category for that now.
Yes Night Owl, the SPs should be a completely separate category on TCDB. My humble opinion is that they're not part of the base set. They're a photo parallel plain and simple and should be treated as such. TCDB already has categories for parallel and insert cards. I'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult to break out the short prints from the base set as well. Just my two cents.
Post a Comment