The month of May was very kind to my Rich Hill PC, as was eBay, now that I think about it. I picked up six pretty nice Hills and decide to wait to show them off all at once:
Rich Hill 2009 Topps Update Black (#57/58)
Have a gander at the "worst" card of today's sextet. This Black parallel closes the book on Rich's 2009 Topps Update run, including base, Gold, Target, and Wal-Mart. That's definitely a nice feeling, and as usual the Black is my favorite of the parallels. 2009 in general is getting there, actually, as I now have 24/29 of his non-1/1s. Also, this looks to be my 15th card of Rich pictured with the Orioles, with whom he pitched 14 games in 2009.
Rich Hill 2007 Sweet Spot Signatures Silver Stitch Silver Ink auto (#04/53)
I'll ask the usual rhetorical question: who doesn't love these Sweet Spot autos?! The silver ink paired with the same colored seams looks especially nice, and it only cost about $5. Hill has a ridiculous 17 different versions in this set, but I'm slowly getting there now that I've hit number five (three baseballs, two gloves). The more difficult quest will be finding the versions pairing him up with former teammate Aramis Ramirez. By the way, the seemingly random numbering on this card can be attributed to his Cubs jersey number.
Rich Hill 2008 Topps Triple Threads 217B Gold triple jersey auto (#25/25)
And here's a triple helping of Triple Threads! The Sapphire and one of the Golds came from a guy from whom I previously bought a few other TTT Hills, and those set me back a way-too-cheap $10, while the latter Gold was just $3. I now own an encouraging 11/18 non-1/1 versions in the set, including the "A" (stars) and "B" ("CHC") variations of the Golds and Sapphires. Better yet, I unintentionally picked up both Sapphire cards #d 01/10! These are easily among Rich's best cards and adding three at once for under $15 was nothing short of a coup for my PC.
Rich Hill 2008 Upper Deck Timeline 1995 SP Top Prospects auto
Finally, there's this sweet die-cut throwback auto. It's a callback to UD's landmark 1995 set that honored what it considered some of the better rising Minor League stars (and includes several cards of Wonderful Monds, Tim!) of the time, and famously features a very limited Michael Jordan auto. The set was done in this very style, which in some ways actually kind of feels like it was ahead of its time. The autograph is pretty much equivalent to the base card plus some different coloring and looks fantastic. This is definitely one of the more interesting Hill hits (up to 88 now!) that I own.
So I mentioned at the beginning that I was pretty eager to write this post, and I'll bet you're wondering why. Well, you all know how much I like to celebrate milestones over here, large or small. Today marks three huge accomplishments for me, in what I consider increasingly significant order:
1. 200 Michigan Baseball PC hits. 201, to be exact! I was determined to make sure that Rich was responsible for that landmark, although odds were in his favor anyway--he represents about 44% of that collection. I'm quite proud of hitting this mark with the year not even half over since it was one of my New Year's resolutions back in January.
2. 200 different Rich Hill PC cards. Today's IHAS count is 203! 10 of those are 1/1s, so I look forward to claiming 200 non-1/1s as well. As far back as last August I could claim about a third of that total, so now I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor (and quite a few trades--thank you all again!) such as daily eBay and COMC searches. I've already passed the 50% mark and I won't be looking back.
3. 1000 Michigan Sports PC hits.
It would likely take me a good amount of time to dig through both blogs and figure out exactly when I hit 500, but I don't really care because today is all about celebrating 1K! The sidebar has the current totals for all four sports, but as of today, my 1003 hits include baseball (201), basketball (19), football (713), and hockey (70). Of my five New Year's milestone goals, I've already achieved the marks for baseball (200+, again) and unique football players (100+), and the others are within reach: 37 more football hits (with many in-hand) will make 750, I'll need just five more hockey hits for 75, and just 97 more hits from all sports will get me to the apparently conservative total of 1100 I was shooting for six months ago.
So as always, thanks so much to everyone that contributed to each of these totals; I really appreciate your help in improving my favorite PCs!
Stay tuned very soon for another eBay catchup post, and plenty more COMC hauls!
