Anyway, this is a good early morning post, as I set myself up for some positive thinking. All of these cards came in over the last few weeks.
I love Refractors on cards. They are awesome. In fact, I've found that I have grown tired of regular chrome cards, to the point where they don't capture my attention at all, but give me some rainbow-reflecting parallels and I'll just lap them up. Like this one:
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| 2009 Bowman Chrome #26 Curtis Granderson Refractor |
I already liked Curtis' regular Bowman card this year, and the chrome refractor--especially when you can capture it with the right ratio of colored streaks--is outstanding. Truly outstanding are things like the blue-border refractors and the lower numbered parallels, but those are harder to come by, and therefore not yet in my collection.
With the technology the same, it is no surprise that the Topps Chrome version looks just as good.
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| 2009 Topps Chrome #120 Curtis Granderson Refractor |
Seriously. I might consider abandoning my entire collection just to go after all of Granderson's chrome refractors of things, in their multi-paralleled glory. Just look how much better it is than the regular card:
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| 2009 Topps Chrome #120 Curtis Granderson |
Not even close.
One exception to this can be found in Topps Finest, where this years cards were uniformly outstanding. The base cards were nothing to sneeze at--they had more dimension than your typical shiny cards--but again, the refractors really pop:
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| 2009 Topps Finest #102 Curtis Granderson Refractor |
Of course, Topps hasn't always hit the nail on the head. I was thoroughly unimpressed with what they offered in Topps Co-Signers. To quote myself:
It is fine, I guess, but for me it is way too shiny. That shine is not classy and visually stimulating like Topps Chrome, it is disorienting and bothersome, like a mirror to a cat. Notice my hands and camera sharply reflecting off the card.
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| 2008 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson Green Parallel (#180/200) |
See? Way too shiny. Co-Signers was card fail, even in the rarer parallel versions. Kind of. It was fail until I got the "hyper-plaid" parallel versions. I will use my pictures here in place of 3000 words:
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| 2008 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson HyperPlaid Blue (#18/50) |
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| 2009 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson HyperPlaid Red (#024/100) |
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| 2008 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson HyperPlaid Bronze (#12/75) |
Those are awesome. It just goes to show that there are good cards in bad products. Topps may never make these again, and the pictures may not even do them proper justice, so I recommend running out and picking up a "hyper-plaid" card for yourself. They are like Xfractors on acid.
So, that's it for today. Shiny cards abound to brighten up my dreary day on the Bayou. Regular posting should continue in the future as soon as I'm back surrounded by the comforts of home (and can take more pictures of new cards).
