Paying Tribute

The need for supplies, specifically thick top loaders, is what drove me to visit my LCS over the weekend, but the 50-cent bins and the 2019 Panini Prizm parallels is what prompted me to stay a little while longer.

More so than any other card shop I've ever visited, this store, located about 20 minutes away from my house, is immaculately organized. Everything, from the hobby boxes to the supplies and display cases, is accessible and organized, so I barely have any trouble tracking something down while I'm there.

There are also ~a dozen bins of cards, ranging from Red Sox singles to relics/autographs, scattered across the store. Being that I had some time on my hands, I opted to search through more than just the usual 50-cent box to see if there was anything else that piqued my interest.

Given the cards that follow across the rest of this post, I assume that the LCS owner either opened a box of 2019 Topps Tribute and opted to sell the individual cards or purchased singles for an affordable price.

Either way, there was a fair number of hits from the high-end set in the relic/autograph bin, all of which were at a reasonable price. Typically, the relic cards that I purchase are from mid-end 2000s sets or modern-day products like A&G or Heritage, so it's not every day that I add a high-end card from a set like Tribute to my collection.

The Schwarber relic is a green parallel from the Stamp of Approval insert, a set where all the cards are authenticated by MLB and guaranteed to be from a specific game.

The jersey piece is said to be from 5/28/2018, a road game in which the Cubs played the Pittsburgh Pirates. Schwarber, however, didn't do much in that game besides draw a walk and drive in a run.

Unlike my player collections, I don't have any established rules when it comes to purchasing relic cards and autographs, for I store them separate from the cards of guys that I collect.

This, I find, gives me more freedom when it comes to this aspect of the hobby and permits me to purchase a card that I appreciate, whether I have a PC for that player or not.

For example, I just started collecting Freddie Freeman several weeks ago, but that didn't influence my decision to pick up this triple relic green parallel, serial numbered out of 99.

Instead, I chose it because I love the look of the glossy card and the dark blue jersey swatches whereas, in most products, the relics are grey or white.

The jersey relics on the Carlton Fisk dual relic may be white and grey, but I'm totally fine with that given that he's a Hall of Famer whose jerseys are likely hard for Topps to come by.

Though relics aren't as popular as they once were, it still impresses me that Topps can acquire jerseys worn by Baseball legends regularly for their high-end and even mid-end products.

The 2 pieces of game-used memorabilia on the card above are fairly large as far as relics are concerned, and even though Fisk is shown on the White Sox rather than my desired team, the Red Sox, I felt that adding this card to my relic/autograph collection was worthwhile.

I'm not a huge follower of the New York Mets nor star pitcher Noah Syndergaard, but the price on this Iconic Perspectives autograph was too low to pass up, especially taking into account the beautiful and intricate design that you can't find in just any Baseball card product.

Plus, the signature is on-card as opposed to sticker autos which have grown to bother me even more so than unlicensed autographs in recent years. Everything about this card is so exact that a sticker autograph could potentially ruin this gorgeous design.

Like all hits in high-end products like Tribute, the Syndergaard auto is serially numbered (in this case, 40/99). The back of the card accompanies the front perfectly with the black and gold pairing brilliantly with the multi-layer design that creates such intricate patterns on the front of this on-card auto.

This Syndergaard card symbolizes exactly what I love about collecting autographs and relic cards in the hobby today. The latter of the 2 can be found at extremely low prices given the low demand for relics nowadays, and even autographs can drop in price if you buy them at the right time.

Syndergaard isn't coming off the best season, and he's not a player that I follow too closely or know that much about. Both the design and the price of the Iconic Perspectives autograph, however, captured my attention, and that's what I love so much about this part of the hobby.