I had received a package from Johnny over at Cards from the Quarry last week amid my musings about the the card show and I neglected to post it at the time. Now that I have a minute and I’m not scanning things like a crazy person, I can show you this…
That is an absolutely gorgeous card. 2004 Topps Retired, Luis Tiant auto, uncirculated. When Johnny emailed me after I had picked up that Dexter Fowler auto, he initially said he had something I would “fall in love with”. He was right. That card is awesome in so many ways. The blue sharpie pops right off the card, the revered design with the chrome, the fact that it’s uncirculated in the first place. Wow. This jumps right towards the top of my personal favorites. It also helps that I had a personal connection to Mr. Tiant as well.
The card love doesn’t stop there either. He also included a couple 2008 Upper Deck Timeline cards I needed and a couple of ToppsTown as well.
It’s been a real pleasure trading with everyone in the card collecting community. There’s no way I would have been able to experience such awesome cards otherwise.
Thanks again for an awesome trade Johnny!
I actually bought this card at a show to pair with my Bill Mazerowski auto that I got in a group break last summer, but the Maz was 2005 instead of 2004 so it looked kind of weird together. I am glad I was able to find a nice home for it.
You actually needed those Timeline cards? Sweet. I thought they were just mainly trade filler, since they were the common base cards.
One question though…do you plan on setting the Tiant free, or are you going to leave it encased?
Oooh, good question. I’m not sure. I had tossed around the idea of getting some sort of wall mounted display (large shadow box, etc) to display my really awesome cards in my man-cave, and when doing so, encasing my other cards in those cool UltraPro One-Touch holders, which are about the same size. So, simply for display sake, if the holders are the same size, I’d probably just leave it alone.
I’ve seen uncirculated cards on ebay both in and out of their protector, and I don’t think it really hurts the value any so long as the serial number and authentic sticker are still on the card.
Personally, I’ll probably leave it in, just because I wouldn’t want to mess it up.
Do you know if Topps offers some sort of “send it back to us” program to have it re-slabbed in a new case, just in the case of scratches on the holder? Which, btw, yours is way cleaner than the Youk I bought next week, which is all scratched up.