Friday, November 26, 2021

online shopping in the spotlight

happy black friday everyone! find any deals at your lcs or comc? i avoided card shopping today, but i did purchase some cards from a topps online only set a couple of months ago. this was a set from their topps x collaborations called "spotlight 70 featuring andy friedman". at the time that the checklist was released, all i knew was that these would be watercolor interpretations of existing cards of former players, including steve garvey. the only card image i saw was a 1988 topps david cone rendition, but i had hopes of seeing garvey's 1978 or 1974 topps card reimagined as part of the set.

once the cards were printed and delivered, i found that garvey's card looked like this:
that is a take on his 1985 glossy all-star card
from rack packs.  here's the back of the 2021 card:
and here's the original back:
i can see how the source for the new card is listed as "1984", but it's really a 1985 card.  i'm not disappointed, simply because i like having new steve garvey cards to add to my collection.  of course, there are parallels, and i added a couple of those, too.

this is a glossy parallel
numbered to 50

and this is a spotlight 70 logo parallel
numbered to 70

there are red backs (numbered to 10) and rainbow foil (numbered to 5) versions, as well as color test prints (think printing plates) each of which are 1/1. there are also sticker auto versions, and i thought i saw an artist proof version numbered to 25 as well, but i don't see that on topps' website.

there were 4,332 sets printed if i understand their print run data correctly - these were sold in 10 card packs so i don't know if that is the number of packs or the number of complete 70 card sets printed. anyway, it's something different, that's for sure!

8 comments:

  1. I must admit I'm not a big fan of most of the Topps art cards.

    I did spend a bit on COMC today, mostly working on vintage stuff. I didn't get any amazing deals, but I got some nice cards and I'm looking forward to getting them.

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    1. This was a pc purchase all the way. I like the concept but not the execution. Hope you get your comc cards in a reasonable amount of time

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  2. I'm so out of touch with current online issues, I didn't know these were even a thing. But I do enjoy seeing artist renditions of classic cards from the 80's and earlier.

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    1. I hear ya. I only found out about this one because someone was preselling singles on eBay.

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  3. I don't know much about art, but I can't see any technical brilliance, or any creativity. Looks like a B+ high school project of copying a photograph.

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    1. Looks like his style is more suited to the cartoons he does for The NY Times. I think you are right that just recreating an existing card isn’t very exciting

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  4. One has to look pretty hard for any good deals on COMC during their sale this year, which is kind of a shame, because the site has pretty much returned to normal in all aspects... except for the prices! I've bought about 20 cards so far, only one of which I would consider to be a great deal.

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    1. I bought four cards from comc on eBay. I would say only one was overpriced but I didn’t want to wait for my cards so chose not to upload credit and make offers.

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