Baseball cards are wonderful things with a ton of variety. Some of that variety is from different manufacturers that employ techniques intended to set themselves apart from their competition. Some of that variety is from the same company attempting different product lines with themes intended to catch unique sub-sections of the collectors out there. Some, really most, is from forced diversity in the form of parallels. An array of colors and/or printing techniques with assigned rarities designed to entice collectors (I hope).
Each year, it seems like more and more variations are added to the production line, which is odd, because just about every color of the rainbow has been covered. Not all of them work on cardboard, but that doesn’t stop companies from trying.
In “honor” of these attempts, I wanted to create a short series going through that rainbow. A lot of focus in my past blog posts have been on the rarer parallels, or ones that compliment the uniforms, but I have a bunch of cards with all kinds of colors and so why not celebrate the ROYGBIV aspect of collecting, right?
The “I’m Seeing Red” part of this comes from other places, but I’m associating it with what is now an older song, but one that was a big part of my college experience. I’m sure that several of you may want the card companies to take the endless parallels along with the radio in the song. There are certainly times I feel the same.
I know there’s red on the Cubs uniform & logo, but still looks odd
As a Cubs fan, the red seems unnatural. Of course, having Targets in Chicago, these were the more common sight for years. Back when I was selling more regularly, I would buy a few blasters just to try to sell these parallels and anything else I happened to find, and it worked pretty well.
Found on COMC, I think
The solid border color is probably the bigger problem. Here’s the shiny background from 2006 SF/X and I don’t mind that look. This has the added bonus of using red foil for the serial numbering as well.
Close to jersey number
Red works more for Angels cards, which is no surprise. There are not enough crazy background things going on here, but the color still really pops.
The darker red is perfect for D-Backs
Red also has moved its way into the mini realm. The color borders are usually reserved for standard sized cards, but nothing is immune. I dread the day we see color front AND back variants (red regular, red A&G back, red piedmont, etc).
Not a chrome card, if you can believe it
When you add shine to the border, it solves a lot of problems. Here’s another example of where colors are not the limit. We’re already seeing patterns being added to colors to create new options.
Need 7 more Face 2 Face for Kerry, most relics
Honestly, I think the colored foil board is my favorite way to present new colors. This red looks fantastic and all of the colors in this style I’ve seen from Elite have been equally good.
That’s over the warning track
Colored foil is an under-utilized resource. It doesn’t matter what team you’re looking at, this looks good. Also odd that Warning Track hasn’t been used more in cardboard as an insert or subset name.
The Greats
Insert parallels usually bug me. Even in the Ultra Gold Medallion days they were rough. I was lucky enough to grab this shortly after 2013 Topps released. Although I don’t like three different versions, this one is probably my favorite visually.
Not numbered, but a rumored print run of 63.
Even with the retro uniform, the red shiny still kind of works. It certainly stands out. Will other colors fare as well as red has? Will I have enough orange and yellow cards to make a decent post? We shall see as we move to the next rung on the rainbow ladder.
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