Late Contenders

 With 2/14 being about a week away, I'm going to have to do a Top 10 again this year of cards that I've acquired that were also first available over the past year. My most recent COMC shipment contained a handful of late contenders for that list.

Soccer is always the odd sport out when it comes to the binders. I've got enough different players to warrant their own section in the spreadsheets, but not enough of anybody to really make anybody the runaway leader in terms of cards. Angel di Maria might be one of the more decorated members of the soccer portion, but this is only his 3rd card. And that still places him in second place in the collection.

I'll go on an unlicensed kick for a bit, with this pair of cards out of Topps Chrome. This might be the first cards where he's referred to as Rip on the front of the cards. That should probably count for something when I'm doing up the list, right? 

Plus, these might be the only basketball cards that will even count towards the list as potential entries.

Even before parallels are considered, Drew Bledsoe and Jim Kelly have about a dozen entries among the base cards in Composite, which had a Chronicles vibe of a bunch of designs that could have had individual releases, but didn't get them. At least the front facing photos don't do that bad of a job of hiding the lack of licensing. 

That Bats parallel of Jaxon Smith-Njigba might be the brightest card I have that isn't some sort of abrasive parallel. I'd have to watch some 80s music videos to see that much neon. 

As is seemingly the usual, Nikolaj Ehlers takes advantage of the cheapness of epack cards to win the numbers game in 2/14 posts. The top row features silver and outburst parallels from flagship with a Liquid Metal Platinum parallel and Black Diamond insert on the bottom. The LM card is the only numbered card in the bunch. I'm not sure how scientifically accurate the representation of liquid metal is, but that's certainly a...unique background.

I'm not sure how many of these will show up in one week's time, but there you have it!