Thursday 13 December 2018

Raptorific!

Coming off wins on a back-to-back on the west coast, including a Kawhi-less victory in Oakland, I figured this time was as good as any to catch up on a quarter of Raptors case breaks I was in. There's a pile of base cards for the team sets in all these, but I'll only hit the highlights.

And this was a big one for me:
Thanks to 2018-19 Certified, Fred VanVleet finally got himself a base card as a Raptor. All he had prior to this were autographs, and his only non-auto was a Wichita State Shockers card that he shared with fellow undrafted teammate Ron Baker. This was one of the cards I was considering for my card of the year pick, and it probably would be top 5.
Base cards mean parallels, and here's one to /99.
He also gets cards in Prizm, with these being the base, the Hyper Prizm and the Ruby Wave parallels.
Although I did get a couple more Ruby and Hyper, I only landed one of the more standard silver Prizms, this Pascal Siakam.
Donruss was actually the first of these products to drop. And more parallels, this time of the two new faces in town.
I'm guessing that this All-Stars insert from this will be the last DeRozan cards of his active career where he's listed with the Raptors.
Tracy McGrady only spent a few seasons with the Raptors, and didn't exactly leave on the best of terms. Still, we're a forgiving bunch, and I'll still welcome post-career cards of the HOFer.
Finally, some Absolute. The Raptors have little rookie content so far this season. There's a Deng Adel card in Contenders draft, but he's with the G-League 905 team. I'd love for Chris Boucher to make an appearance in something, but I'll guess that's a long shot. But because of this lack of rookies, their slot tends to be dirt-cheap in case breaks. That leads to this card. It's a one-colour swatch, but this is a more limited one, being /49. There are various levels of these, from 1 to 5, with 1 being the most common, and 5 being a 1-1.

Speaking of that...
There's a Level 5 1-of-1 right now! That's a great way for me to welcome Danny Green into my collection. The only Raptors autograph in the whole product is Danny Green, so this might be the best single card available for the team across the product! And it is mine, all mine! Now that's a great way to close out a post!

3 comments:

  1. I don't want to rain on your parade here, but why does it seem like they always put the worst stickers on the 1 / 1 cards? There is a Carrie Fisher Superfractor on eBay all the time with a horrible sticker signature on it.

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  2. Normally can't stand listening to Warriors basketball talk on the radio every morning... but it was interesting hearing about their loss and the variety of fan reactions.

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  3. VanVleet also has a card in last year's Playoff set from the Instant program. It's my only card of him so far. Always nice to get a 1/1!

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