Tigers Checklist: 2009 Finest

When I started to do these checklists last week I said something that I'm going to need to clarify. I said that I wouldn't be worrying about creating checklists of parallel sets. I called them the bane of my existence. I think this needs a little more clarification. Parallels are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, mostly because I find that they often are better looking than their "base" counterparts. They only become burdensome and awful when they are 1) indistinguishable from, 2) unambiguously worse looking than their base cards. Or if the parallels come in a million unnecessary versions. Topps Co-Signers comes to mind. Meanwhile, sets like Topps Finest, or even good 'ol Topps Chrome has easy to understand parallel versions that improve on the original.

That being said, I'm still not going to show pictures of the base set, and catalog all the parallel sets and show pictures of all of those. If you want the full list, that's what the master checklist is for. Still, sometimes the parallel versions are so nice looking that I may feel like showing them off in lieu of the base set.

Such is the case with Topps Finest. In 2009, Finest produced another great looking set--in my opinion an enormous improvement on 2008. Best among the set were the multiple parallel set iterations, each in a different beautiful color. I've chosen to showcase the Blue ones (#/399) here. Unfortunately, scanner technology has not advanced to the point where the true beauty of refractors can be captured on screen. Fortunately, the shiny base cards don't look much better. So be it.

With that, your 2009 Finest Detroit Tigers--shown in their Blue Refractor Form:

#30 Magglio Ordonez	#43 Gary Sheffield	#95 Miguel Cabrera
#102 Curtis Granderson	#141 Chris Lambert RC	Rookie Redemption Rick Porcello

Oh, right. Finest had a "Rookie Redemption" program where they incrementally revealed the players that would be included on numbered cards. Porcello was #9 in the program. Shown here is the redemption card itself--the actual card that comes as a result of the redemption has not yet surfaced.

UPDATE--now seen here is the actual (non-refractor, sorry) Porcello card that was the result of the redemption. Enjoy!