A couple Wednesdays ago I came back with a second group of Clayton Richard rainbow cards. Well today you're getting the third and final round--though I do have one more grab bag of his stuff to post soon. So here's another nine for your viewing pleasure:
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Chrome Atomic Refractor (#081/225)
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Chrome Orange Refractor
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Chrome Purple Refractor (#235/499)
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Chrome Refractor
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Chrome X-Fractor
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Chrome
Before these pickups I had exactly zero of Clayton's cards from after 2010. Now I have nine (including the three below), including these six out of Richard's 10 Topps Chrome versions. That means he has a base card and NINE parallels. Excuse me, I need to go start a blog called "Too Many Parallels." What? It's got the right number of syllables and everything! The only problem is that every post would literally be me going "TOPPS, Y U SO MANY PARALLELS?"
Seriously, though, that's way too many parallels. Out of these, I really only care for the Refractor and maybe the Orange Refractor. The Purple is just an ugly color, and I've just never cared for Topps' "Atomic" Refractors and X-Fractors. Oddly enough, the ones I like the most--Blue, Gold, and Red--are among the four I'm missing, along with Sepia, which is at least decent. In my perfect world, you'd have a Regular Refractor plus increasingly rarer Red, Blue, and Gold (why ISN'T Gold the toughest, anyway?), and then maybe a 1/1 version with a different color each year. There, that's four normal Refractor parallels and one 1/1 to boot. I'm fortunate that the four I do need aren't ridiculously rare, though, so this'll be one project I can put some effort into this year.
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Cognac Diamond Anniversary
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary Factory Set Limited Edition
Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Gold (#0873/2011)
Ok, that's it--I'm coining a new collecting term: parallelarrhea. When Topps swallowed up all of its colorful competitors, something didn't agree with it and the result was way too many different versions of the same card, also known as parallelarrhea. Old Clayton also has 10 versions of his card in the 2011 Topps flagship set (not including the "Padres Topps" set). These three only scratch the surface. While you've got the old standby Gold, which shouldn't go anywhere, at least not until the year 5000 or something, and I've always been cool with the rarer Black version, but then things get iffy:
- Cognac Diamond Anniversary: take a look at that top card and try to convince me it's not a hot mess. It looks like whatever didn't agree with Topps came out the other end and they threw up camouflage all over the front.
- Diamond Anniversary Factory Set: you earned this if you spent way too much money on codes for Topps' Diamond Giveaway scam. The only difference is the logo in the upper-left corner. You don't even get a different colored border or anything.
- And the rest: Diamond Anniversary (maybe), Factory Set Red Border (WHY?), Hope Diamond (meh), Target (NO), and Wal Mart Black Border (NONONONONONO!). Topps. Wat r u doin? Topps. STAHP.
How about we simplify things with Gold, Black, something very rare like Platinum, and then one other color that changes every year? It's good to challenge collectors by making one or two versions that are tough to get, but this retail-exclusive bullshit has to stop.
So all that complaining aside, I now have 42 Clayton Richards, and I'm on my way to getting past half of his PC. That's no small feat either, considering I had very few of his cards before going nuts on COMC.
I'll be back tomorrow with another football post for you Wolverine faithful!
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