Player Collection Catch Up - Rickey Henderson

One of my goals in 2015 was to place a little more focus and pick up some cards to grow my player collections.  I have made varying degrees of progress but decided it was time to post updates for some of the players to gauge my progress.  In this post I will share some of my more recent Rickey Henderson pickups - one of the players I have made the most progress in collecting. 

 First up is this really nice looking Prizm camo parallel.  The lack of MLB license doesn't scream out at you and the camo colors work really well with the Oakland color scheme.  This is one of my favorite looking recent Rickey cards.

Here are 3 cards from last year. I scanned these quite a while back and haven't shared.  The 1987 Topps inspired Future Stars card was a retail insert.  The card looks nice from a design perspective but Rickey was almost a decade into his career by 87 so I am a little confused by the concept.  I am usually not a fan of the horizontal Ginter cards but this Rickey one works with the photo selection.  While the non-logoed Camo parallel above works, the Hometown Heroes photo selection could have been much better.

This rookie card Ring card is super think and very heavy.  Any hobby shop selling packs of Jumbo versus the entire box was in danger of having pack searchers seek these out.  I do like the fact that the photo does come from early in Rickey's career.

Here is a quad of base cards with our first non-Oakland A's appearance albeit in an unlicensed, unlogoed card. Not a fan of the 2013 Ginter photo selection of Rickey but Topps sure got it right in the Gypsy Queen and last year's Ginter releases.

I have tons of Rickey Donruss cards in my collection and the last two years have allowed me to increase that number even more.  The top two are the base card and Hot Off the Press parallel from this year.  The Hot Off the Press seem to fall 1/box despite not being serial numbered and I was lucky enough to pull this one out of my first box (don't you love it when you pull cards of your player collection!).  I am a big fan of this year's All-Time Diamond King inserts and in addition to picking up my players, I have decided to build the set.  The Power Plus insert from last year really didn't do much for me but with almost 300 HRs in addition to all his other tools, Rickey fits the definition of Power Plus.

These are a few of the older Henderson cards I have picked up.  The Throwback Collection is an insert from back in 2005.  The shiny Angels card didn't scan great but is a nice looking Select Company parallel from 1997 Select.  The 2000 Fleer Tradition card is the glossy parallel, if I really these were only released in factory sets.  Finally the sticker card is a variation I didn't have from back in 1982, there were a couple different backs on the stickers.  This scan shows 4 Rickey cards with 4 different teams and doesn't include my least favorite Rickey destination.

 My least favorite Rickey destination is captured in this card.  When I saw this I was pretty bummed that a recently released card would feature him in a Dodgers uniform.  The unlicensed and airbrushed uniform dampen the pain a bit but the player collector in me had to pick up this card.

Here is another airbrushed card, this time a Yankees version, this nice looking Lumberjacks relic from 2011 limited.  This card is "limited" to 299 copies, not too limited by today's standards if you ask me but it did keep the price down for me to pick up.

 This is one of those dilemma cards for a player collection, a card that features two of you players. For me I typically choose to add it to the binder of the player I like more or collect more strongly so sorry Mr. Winfield but this is a Rickey card in my collection.

 This card is one I picked up right after it was released. These were inserts in the Topps flagship release and very nice cards.  They are very thick, framed in gold (not real gold, just the color) and have the design of the old Topps Gold Label brand.  I pulled a Joe Morgan from this set myself and found this Rickey for a pretty reasonable price.  I love this card and it is one of my favorite new releases even if it is a little gimmicky.

This card design called out to me for some reason.  In reality the picture is too small and the team nameplate is too pick.  The lack of a hat logo is distracting. However the early career picture and gold framing of that picture must have been enough to overcome the deficiencies as I picked up this card without hesitation.

The final card to share in order to catch up my Rickey collection purchases is this sharp looking 2014 National Treasures card from last year.  I really enjoy these cards and wish I had some additional time and money when this was released as I would have liked to add more cards to my collection from this set.  I don't think the resale on the non-big hits was crazy and I am a big fan.  Luckily I did get this Rickey card and a couple others.

This brings my Rickey card total up to 1614 different cards.  I know that sounds pretty impressive and it does take up multiple binders but becomes a little less impressive when you consider he has over 5600 cards.