A Reimold Rainbow

Recently, I got on Ebay and decided to try to get all of the 2011 Topps parallels of Nolan Reimold.  I was successful in getting all of them with the exception of some of the 1/1s (Canary Diamond, printing plate, etc).  I had already had his 2011 Topps base card and his Cognac parallel, so I needed to knock off the Hope Diamond, Diamond, Wal Mart Blue, Target Red, Gold and Black parallels.  My favorite so far is the above Hope Diamond.  I think those cards looks really nice with the blue hue to the diamond concept.

The regular diamond parallels look nice, as always.  All of Nolan's 2011 Topps came out of Topps Update.

I like the red Target parallel and blue Wal Mart parallel.  They are a nice addition to retail blasters.  I'm glad they did something other than the black Wal Mart parallel this year because they were a little hard to tell apart from the regular black parallels.

 The black parallels are always nice.  I usually do pretty well in pulling black parallels from my boxes.  I have several of some decent stars for sale in my booth at the card shows.

You can't go wrong with Topps Gold.  They have had these parallels since 1992.  I always enjoy pulling a gold parallel of an Oriole out of a pack.  I bought this one off of Ebay and a day later got another one in a trade with my buddy Nick.  My good friend Ryan will probably end up with the one that I bought at some point.

So, I will keep a lookout for the Canary Diamond 1/1 and a printing plate of 2011 Topps Nolan Reimold, then I should have all of his 2011 variations.  I highly doubt I will get the Canary, but you never know.  If anyone has it, please let me know!

Some Christmas Packs of 2011 Topps Update

One of the Christmas presents my wife got me was a blaster box of 2011 Topps Update Series.  It was the Target exclusive version, so inside were two red variation packs (nothing really of note in them) as well as the Commemorative Logo Patch.

The logo patch I got was the above Carlton Fisk Red Sox patch.  It looks pretty cool, even thought I'm not a Red Sox fan.

I got a Roberto Alomar cognac diamond parallel, but I already had it, but the above Koji Uehara diamond parallel was pretty nice.  Rumor has it that Texas is willing to trade Koji back to the Orioles since he really wants to be back in Baltimore.  I'd love to have him back.

Finally, this mini Kimball Champions insert of Vlad Guerrero was also pretty cool.  I didn't think Vlad was a bad pickup for the O's this past season.  Even though, $8 million for a singles hitter is pretty high.  It would have been nice if Guerrero had hit for a bit more power.

Thoughts on 2011 Topps Update Inserts

My son and I had several hours to kill on Saturday so we decided to go to the card shop here in town.  After an initial purchase of some packs (especially one jumbo pack of 2011 Topps Update Series) and looking at my watch to see we still had time to kill, I made the decision to buy a box of 2011 Topps Update Series Jumbo.  I was not disappointed...

This card came out of my initial jumbo pack.  I thought the card looked amazing and it convinced me that I really wanted to bust a box of Update...  This 'Hope Diamond' Markakis looks awesome and I think it scanned really cool...

I got a bunch of the 'Cognac' parallels.  I think these are cool too.  I was really hoping for the Brooks Robinsom, but I got Roberto Alomar and Carl Yastrzemski instead.  Not bad pulls.

The Yastrzemski looks really cool.  I think, in getting a Hall of Famer, Yaz is a pretty good one (not taking anything away from Alomar, of course).

Speaking of Hall of Famers, I also got this Andre Dawson diamond parallel.  It looks really cool scanned as well...

Check out this awesome Frank Thomas legends SP.  In an A's uniform, no less.  What a cool card, especially if you like the color green.  I had to explain to my son that Frank Thomas' nickname was The Big Hurt.  Why Daddy, he asked...  "Well, son, he was big and he hurt pitchers...."

Finally, I got a sweet Kimball Champions mini, this Zach Britton.  I got a bunch of others, but I was really glad I got the Britton.  It came in the pack with the Markakis.

I didn't even discuss the Julio Teheran 'Next 60' auto, the Adrian Gonzalez All Star Relic or the Tom Seaver (Reds) Leather Nameplate...

All in all, I got a sweet box.  I'd like to pick up another at some point, especially if I can chase some of the Brooks parallels...  Anyone got any Brooks Robinson Diamond Parallels (or the base card as well), please hook me up.