I ♥ black refractors

 I ♥  black refractors 

I'm not a bumper sticker guy, but I'd totally put that on my car. Sure, it'd confuse 99.99% of all drivers behind me, but I don't care. I love 'em!

I recently picked up a couple additions to my 2004 Topps Retired refractor auto project.

Candy Man and the Hedgehog. There's a crime-fighting team for ya! (Or maybe a villain duo, more likely?)

These cards sure are beautiful. A rainbow sheen on a well designed black-bordered card.. *contented sigh* ..big fan.

In fact, I'm so smitten for these, that my affection has spilled from 2004 Retired black refractors over to 2004 Topps Chrome black refractors. These are very similar except non-retired guys, obviously, and they're not autographed (for the most part). I already had a couple, and I recently grabbed several of the cheaper singles I could find (i.e. <$1) on COMC and Sportlots, plus a dozen in an eBay lot.

(Big glove sighting!)

(Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?)

(Boomer!)

I shouldn't make it a priority at the moment, but I'd love to complete the set someday (466 cards). If you've got any available, please let me know about a trade. These parallels aren't numbered, but I'd venture a guess that the print run was somewhere around 300-400 (The 2005 versions are #'d /225, for what it's worth). Even no-name guys usually cost a buck or two on the cheap card sites like Sportlots and Just Commons.

And while I doubt I'll go too hard after any autos or relics, it's hard to say no when I find them cheap, such as I did with this Mark Prior:

Gotta love a pitcher at the place with a bat relic. Chrome-Town Heroes (awful/wonderful pun) is an insert set of 21 cards, not serially numbered. There's also a 25-card 1st Year Autograph insert set with black bordered parallels #'d /25.

It'd be cool to put together a "mega master set" of every 2004 Topps black refractor (across all the baseball products), but that'd be a steep hill to climb. Hell, as long as we're daydreaming here, I'd love to have a complete set of 2004 Chrome black refractors and get them all signed IP or TTM, but that would be way too much work. But in a perfect world, yeah.. that'd be sweet!

Anyways, here are my HAVES so far for 2004 Topps Chrome  black refractors  as of 4/3/15:

15, 26, 37, 54, 97, 124, 132, 135, 147, 151, 156, 181, 188, 189, 274, 277, 280, 284, 291, 292, 304, 340, 335, 358, 382, 394, 436, 435, 437, 442, 454, 459, 463

I need any cards besides these. Aw, you know what, I'd happily take dupes, too.. After all, I'd ideally like to risk some to TTMs at some point in the future, so it'd be nice to have backup copies.

Bottom line, if you have any 2004 black refractors that you're not attached to, I'll take 'em!

Thanks for stopping by.