Vida Blue - Golden Age Pick Ups

I am so happy that Vida Blue has started popping up in some new releases.  It has rekindled my interest and excitement of adding to my Vida collection. He is included in the 2012 Panini release and I have picked up some of his "bigger hits" from the set.

First up is a box topper:

This blue pennant is a box topper and other than the picture has a felt-like feel. The top measures 3.5 inches and the pennant is about 5 inches tall.   A unique oddball type card.  If you happen to be interested in one of Russell Johnson, the Professor from Gillgan's Island or Steve Cauthen, a Triple Crown jockey, let me know and we can work out a little trade.  The Professor came in a lot with the Vida and my LCS owner gave me the jockey.

 Next up is the relic card:

This set is titled Museum Age. I like the color as it goes well with the Oakland A's uniform. I am loving the green swatch as well.  Great Vida photo although we have seen it before on other cards.  Overall I think this is a solid design for an unlicensed product.

Finally I picked up the Vida auto card as well:

This set is titled Historic Signatures and features a nice blue on card auto.  Again the color scheme works and I like the banner along the bottom in A's colors.  Similar to the Cooperstown set, we see a cut of cap.  Doesn't bother me as much as it does some others but it sure would be nice if Panini had a license (hint hint MLB!).

I am very pleased with these cards. There are still some Vida's to chase in this set.  I still need his base card and all the mini parallels.  Based on the checklist I got off of Beckett, it appears he has 6 different minis, however one is serial numbered 1/1. There is also a regular sized black parallel to the base that is numbered 1/1.  Apparently there is also a yellow pennant but I have yet to see one of them pop up.  I still have some work to do but I am very happy with the start I have on the Golden Age Vida collection.

One of my goals in 2013 is to work on my non-Giants player collections and while he did play with the Giants for a good portion of his career, many of his cards feature him in the A's uniform.  I don't have that many cards to go after for my Vida collection so I am going to target 25 new Vida Blue cards in 2013.

2013 Vida Blue Collecting Goal - 25 new cards
Cards added in this post - 3
Remaining cards to reach goal - 22