2017 Sportlots purchases: the Pinnacle of PC success

At some point last month I had the sudden realization that my '96 Pinnacle set wasn't quite as complete as I thought; I had one of each card but five of those were the Foil parallels found in Series II.  They're not quite as noticeable in scans but as I ran through my set the reflective foil was unmistakable.  Oh well...TO SPORTLOTS!

In the end I don't feel all that bad about this mistake since it turned into a new card each for my Jim Abbott and Greg Maddux collections.  Abbott's card is his second in the set as he has one in each series, and Maddux is shown on one of his two checklists out of three overall Series II issues (to go with one entry in the first series).  A Dante Bichette Hardball Heroes subset along with a pair of former Dodgers, Ismael Valdes and Greg Gagne, rounds out the group.

Set complete.  Um, again.  Sweet!

But that's not all I grabbed from these couple sellers this time since I was trying to do my usual shipping cost optimization.  So why not see how much they could help out my PCs?  As it turned out, a pretty good amount:

Here's a pair of Kirk Gibsons from early 2000s Upper Deck products:  2003 Sweet Spot Classic and 2004 SP Legendary Cuts.  I just can't get enough of these products because their base sets were solid along with the fantastic autographs they included.

I don't usually get to show off this many new Rich Hills at once these days so this quartet of 2016 Topps stuff has me in a pretty good mood.  From the 2016 flagship rainbow we have 65th Anniversary and Limited Edition stamped parallels along with Hill's Topps Mini base.  Hooray for more unnecessary parallels!  I'm up to six of the 18 rainbow cards with more on the way soon.

Joining those is a very classy looking entry from 2016 Heritage High Numbers.  With that one out of the way I'll need to track down four parallels, but at least I've already found the Advertising Panel, which I didn't even know existed until finding it on COMC the other day!

My new Hill count is 257/374, though as I'm sure I've said a few times recently, I hope he'll make some appearances in 2017 products to bump up that denominator.  Topps unceremoniously ignored him in Series I--hey, who'd be interested in a guy who plays for the Dodgers, doesn't have any cards yet with that team (Topps Now doesn't count, not now, not ever), and was a big story in the regular season and playoffs in 2016?

I managed to find the same flagship trio for new LA Angel Ryan LaMarre that I did for Hill, and the fun photo should make for a good looking rainbow when all is said and done.  I have five of those 18, including his base card and the very rare Framed parallel, as part of 26 of his 54 issues to-date.

I don't always have a ton of luck adding this many cards of Barry Larkin at once either; Sure, there's plenty more to choose from compared to a guy like Hill, but the HOF SS's cards also tend to cost more.  Not in this case, though, as everything you see set me back the minimum $0.18 price (Hill and LaMarre had the only cards that cost $0.25 or more in this case).  One of my favorite Bowman's Best designs, the '96 version, kicks things off, and another card from that year, one of Larkin's Score Dugout Collection parallels, follows.  I went back to the Bowman's Best well with his card from '98, a set that's a bit lower on my list.  Finally, enough time has passed from when I busted lots of '99 Fleer Tradition packs and got sick of the Vintage '61 inserts that I gladly added Barry's card on that old-school design.

Lastly, I managed to triple the number of cards in one of my PCs with this pair of Ross Powells.  A pitcher who was Larkin's teammate for all of nine games in '93, Powell is one of the newest members of my collection since I managed to miss the fact that he was a Michigan Baseball alum who appeared on MLB cards.  I introduced him in a TMM post last year after picking up just one of his seven cards I need to track down, a '94 Pinnacle Museum Collection parallel, and now I'm back with a couple more cards from that year (which is actually the only year during which Ross made it onto some cardboard).  On the left is the base version of that Pinnacle card, in all its full-bleed glory, and to the right is a card from Score which may have been taken at the same game;  Both are rookies, naturally.

I'm hoping I won't have too much difficulty landing the other four, though I have yet to see the Pinnacle Artist's Proof anywhere!

Hey, sometimes a mistake ends up being something productive for your collection.  Kudos once again to Sportlots for helping pad my PCs!