Friday, June 5, 2015

I Think Manufactured Relics are Starting to Grow On Me

A few years back when Topps starting counting its manufactured relics as one of the 3 guaranteed "hits" in each Jumbo box I was pretty ticked off.  I felt somewhat cheated but my attitude has started to turn and I have some appreciation for these when they are done well.  I am not sure what is driving that, it could be the lessening of value and importance of "game used" pieces, the fact that I don't sell much of anything or trade based on book value, or that my tastes have just changed a bit.

Here are some of my recent manufactured "relics" that I have picked up for my collection:

 This Carl Hubbell card may have come from the first set to feature manufactured relics, 2004 Sweet Spot Classics.   I like this one as it features a vintage NY Giants logo that Hubbell wore during his career.  This on is numbered to 300 as you can see.  Some players had multiple patches in the product, for example I have 8 different Willie McCovey cards for this set.

 This card of HOF Christy Mathewson was designed to look like old fashioned felt.  The back calls this a Replica Team Letter Patch so I assume you could spell out New York Giants with Mathewson manupatches but I don't have the desire or patience to track down that many different letters.  I am happy to just have one.

 I really like this card. I bought it on a Sportlots auction sight unseen and I couldn't have been happier.  I love cards with Reggie as an Athletic in part due to the colorfulness of the uniforms and the picture of him in the gold and green plus the big A's World Series patch makes for one impressive card.

This card resembles the silk cards that Topps has put out for a few years and reprints some iconic rookie cards.  Not my favorites but still a decent addition to my collection.

 This last one is one of my favorites.  It features the Say Hey Kid and embeds a metal ring celebrating his ROY award.  These cards are very think and very heavy, it would make pack searching a cinch if a LCS allowed it for a Jumbo box.  I happened to pick this up at my LCS as a single and I am really happy to have it in my collection.

With these solid designs, it seems I have come around to like and appreciate the manufactured relics, what are your thoughts?

1 comment:

  1. I wonder if it would be cheaper to collect Mathewson's full name in manu-relic style (even though they are numbered to 50) than the actual letters of Madison Bumgarner?
    I have to imagine both would be costly.

    ReplyDelete