I have very few card collections given my limited resources and space, but I did decide some time ago to begin collecting on-card Royals autographs. It’s been a blast so far trying to track these things down and this is the latest addition to my collection. To view the cards currently in the collection, take a look at the Gallery. If you have any on-card Royals autos, chances are I need them so don’t hesitate to drop me a line!
My lowest-numbered Royals On-Card Auto has arrived! It’s likely to stay the lowest for some time, as well, as this was something of a fluke.
I’m pretty sure this is the gold version of this card but, honestly, I don’t really know. One of my pet peeves about Topps is inconsistency across brands and years. In this case, I feel like “Gold” should mean the same everywhere. In Topps, gold means #/20xx where xx = the year. In Bowman Chrome, it means #/50. Here I guess it means #/25. I know that print runs of the various products makes consistent numbering throughout products impossible, but I hate relearning it for every product and every year. Not to mention this seller went crazy with the (non-blue) tape on the toploader. Hard to complain for $7 shipped!
Enough of that, let’s talk about Chris. He’s had big league experience in the past three seasons but with little success. He played in almost half of the Royals games last year and ended the season with a dreadful OPS. I have no idea how he ended up in a high end set like this, but his inclusion made it possible for me to add one of the cards from that set to my collection. I really like the design of the on-card autos in this set, even if the tiny space for an auto sometimes jacks up the signature. And, while the numbering is a mystery to me (I’ve also seen #/99, #/75 and #/50 versions of this card (all of which sold for more than I paid for this one), I’m looking forward to completing this rainbow. There’s also a #/10 and a ridiculous 3 1/1s that I will not be actively chasing. The only other Royals on-card auto in this set is Billy Butler and those will be way out of my reach for a long time to come.
My major complaint about this set is the mixture of on-card and sticker autos. It’s not readily obvious which are which from the checklist without a little research on your own. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing what percentage of this year’s Triple Threads (assuming it’s happening again) are on-card autos- and, of course, what Royals make that list!
Hell yeah former Michigan 2B! I’ve been working on getting this card and $7 is a steal.
That’s nice. I’ve been trying to find the Butler card in my price range, but that’s getting harder and harder to do.