I think I made my thoughts on Pablo Sandoval pretty clear a few weeks back, here is a
link if you want to refresh you memory or take a first look. Panda has had a fairly solid start hitting close to .300 through the first few weeks of the season. With his replacement Casey McGehee struggling to get over the Mendoza line, this change is not looking good for the Giants so far. This increases my disdain for the Panda's decision even more but not enough to stop collecting his cards.
All of Sandoval's base cards this year have shown him in his Red Sox uniform but apparently Topps is trying to rid themselves of Pablo jersey pieces as he has shown up in several 2015 Topps relic releases as a Giant. It seems like I am in the minority of Giants fans in still picking up Panda cards and the Red Sox fans must not like cards of him as a Giant because these cards are selling for very low figures.
Here is a trio of recent pick ups.
This 2015 Gypsy Queen relic is a nice looking design and I think Topps picked a nice picture to feature with this design. It looks like he launched an opposite field shot right before this picture was snapped.
This is from the flawed Tribute release where many of the autos were coming out smeared. I wonder what the fate is of all the base cards and relics that got sent back to Topps. I figured prices would be driven up but not in the case of this Sandoval card. I really like the large, baseball diamond shaped swatch on this card. There are 3 current Giants in this set as well - Posey, Bumgarner and Pence - and I may need to track those down as I really like the look of these cards.
The final card in this trio is from Museum Collection and also features a nice big swatch. Since this one is white and the other two are gray, Topps must have at least 2 different jerseys on hand of Sandoval so I expect to see a few more relic cards of the Panda coming out in future sets.
Three nice cards, three solid designs, just wish it was of a player that didn't turn his back on the team that believed in him, invested in him and helped him get 3 World Series rings.
Great relics. I'm with you -- a guy like Sandoval is one you wish would stay with the same team for his whole career.
ReplyDeleteNice cards. Huge fan of Panda. The girl I went to the Giants game with on Sunday was curious about my interest in him... since I'm an A's fan. I told her... I root for overweight players who know how to make contact with the ball.
ReplyDeleteAs for Topps and those relics... I'm glad that they decided to use photos of him in his Giants uniform. I can't stand it when the jersey swatch and the photo don't represent the same team.