Sure, getting a jersey swatch that may have once touched a player's body might be interesting. But getting something outside of that will always be more interesting to me.
Such as this. Red isn't a colour associated with the Ravens. It isn't really one you associate with Pittsburgh either, unless you're referencing the seats at Three Rivers Stadium, which this piece comes from.
Donruss was even nice enough to include a photo of the seats in question on the back. The only beef is they included the stats from Lewis' only game at the time in Pittsburgh - 16 yards worth in his rookie year of 2000. This card also pairs nicely with a Josh Gibson 2005 Sterling card I picked up ages ago, which featured a Forbes Field seat piece. 23-24 Artifacts hockey contains Civic Arena relics, so maybe I can complete the unofficial series.
A towel relic that only made appearances in a photo shoot is less special than the stadium seat, but at least the towels that were used for these always are nice and soft.
And there's also a photo of the towel on the back as well. Austin's expression really seems to be "You want this towel back? Why?".
One of the Topps Heritage NBA sets has arena seat relics.
ReplyDeleteThe stadium seat / floor / dasher board relics are neat but I don't know what's less "game used" - a towel the player actually touched ( but *only* for the purposes of the card ) or a stadium fragment that was definitely *not* used by the player - but served a real purpose in the game.
ReplyDeleteFor me it depends on the era of the athlete being featured and the actual game used item. I think stuff like game used gloves and cleats almost always trump a simple single color jersey swatch. Also the era of the player plays a factor. I'd rather have a jersey card of someone like Jackie Robinson or Bart Starr... but would rather have a seat relic of current athletes. Lol. I guess I'm all over the place... and need to create a flowchart to explain myself :D
ReplyDeleteI love the non jersey relics 100 times over
ReplyDelete