General Forum

2012 Topps Flagship Baseball - Gold Sparkle, Gold /2012, Target Red, Walmart Blue, TRU Purple, Factory Orange /190, Black /61, [platinum, wood, gold nugget 1/1] = 7 total excluding 1/1 [or 8 -9 if you want to include photo varition, gold rush stamp promo variation]

2012 Prizm  Baseball - Green, Target Red, Walmart Blue, Gold /10, [black 1/1] 2 more promos at the National:  Cracked ice and Hyper plaid = total of 6

just 9 years later .... what are the total color variations now with Topps Flagship and Panini Prizm ???

And to think that some people thought that the large amount of parallels was why Pacific went out of business.

From a basketball perspective I remember really enjoying the box of 2007-08 Finest I bought at the time and hoping for some of the different refractor parallels. Looking that up it has 9 different refractors which are at least  in sort of logical decreasing print runs (though why 2 different 1/1s...).

I look at something like Prizm now with approx 40 parallels and just would never bother.

I guess a lot of people must like them or Panini wouldn't do it but just seems like such overkill and another attempt to create false rarity/scarcity.

They are definitely pretty to look at in some cases, but trying to collect them all would be exhausting. I would definitely rather that they try to get in some more actual players into the set than more colors.

I think the card designers found an old box of 64 crayola crayons and said,"Challenge accepted"!

Or they went to Home Depot's paint section and said " Hmmm, I wonder "

I like them.

If you're opening a box to collect a complete set, the parallels would be unbelievably annoying. However, it is a player collectors delight, at least in my opinion. I like the challenge. I've got all of the Aaron Nola colors from 2019-2020 Prizm excluding parallels numbered /10 or fewer. (I even have a few numbered under /10 from this year!)

I like the idea of colored parallels but some sets take it to the extremem. I would be good with a couple of parallels (4-6) plus printing plates. Last July I completed the rainbow for 2013 Chrome Marshawn Lynch. I am skipping the Super and printing plates, but it was still the base plus 13 parallels. That is way too much.

As a player collector I have no real problem with it.  Trying fo find them is frusrating have 23  diff colors / parallel sets.  My issues is the people that have them think they are worth 5 to 25 times the value of the base card.  I'm not talking about the low SN cards.