Story time...
Back in 2011, about a month after my 13th birthday, my travel baseball team made the trek to Cooperstown to play at Cooperstown All Star Village. It was genuinely the best week and a half of my life. After one of our early afternoon games, my team drove 25 minutes into town to see the hall of fame and walk around the main town. One of our stops was a baseball card shop. I was pretty much the only one on the team who seriously collected cards (Video games were and still are way more in). But for one day, many of my teammates decided to buy a few packs, and we all opened them and compared our goodies with each other. Me and another teammate, who was a Giants fan, opened a few packs of 2011 Bowman, which was pretty expensive for tween kids even then (let alone today). I could only afford 3 or 4 packs with 2 weeks of allowance built up.
I pulled a few Brandon Belt prospect cards, back when he was the hot new deal in SF, and my friend pulled a beautiful looking Bowman's Best Refractor insert of Chase Utley numbered to 99. The Bowman's Best inserts (this was before Bowman's Best had its own seperate annual set) that year were modeled after the '94 Best design, and they looked amazing. However, the refractor took it to a whole new level. The rainbow sheen on the sharp looking chrome card was amazing to my 13-year old self. So, I traded three seperate Brandon Belt prospect cards for that Utley card.
That fall, I entered public school for the first time in my life as an 8th grader. (I had been home-schooled prior to that). One of our first assignments in one of my classes was to write out things you wanted to do in the next 10 years. I don't know why it popped into my mind, but I decided I would try to complete the entire 25 card veteran Bowman's Best refractor set, and I actually wrote that down. I figured it would be difficult due to budgetary constraints and especially availability, but I liked dumb, unique challenges like that.
Well, 9 years later, I can now happily say that I have finished the set at long, long last! I have been missing BBP-14 Albert Pujols for a good 3-4 years now. I missed out on an ebay auction for it 2 years ago (it sold for $50, shockingly), but when another one popped up on ebay two weeks ago, I told myself I would not miss it. I ended up winning it for a mere $10. I probably ended up spending near $200-250 just to put together this dumb little insert set -- the most expensive ones I bought were the Stanton for around $25, a Jeter PSA 9 (only one I could find) for $55, and a PSA 9 Posey for $40 -- but it was worth it in the end for the journey.
I have now finished the three big, obscure and challenging sets from my childhood that I really wanted to complete -- 2009 SP Authentic cards 1-225, 2010 Topps Attax master set (all 525 Attax cards produced across 8-9 different sets), and finally 2011 Bowman's Best refractors. With me moving out of my parent's place in less than a month and officially entering active duty in the Air Force in exactly two weeks, this feels like a very fitting time to put an end to that chapter of my life as I move into adulthood. So, in a way, this is a rather bittersweet, symbolic moment for me, but I am excited to move into the future. But don't get me wrong, I still intend to collect cards along the way. :)
Edit: Thank you so much for the support everyone! However, as I was putting the card away yesterday, I realized I made a huge boner... my set is not yet complete. I thought I had the other 24 cards, but it turns out I only had 23/25 (now 24/25). I am missing BB-21 -- Kevin Youkilis, which I cannot find online on SportLots, EBay, or Beckett. The search continues...
#COMMONCARDSMATTER
"The 0-2 pitch... SWING AND A MISS! Struck him out! The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 World Champions of baseball!"
- RIP Harry Kalas
