Ok, I haven't done one of these in a while. To recap, my favorite high-end product line is Topps Retired Signature Edition, which ran for 3 years, 2003-2005, with the refractor autographs being a top collecting focus of mine. The "Topps Retired Triad" blog series is an excuse for me to show off a trio of recent adds. Good group today-- all PC guys for me, too.
Big Bo Jackson to kick things off. The photo might be familiar to readers because I featured the black parallel (non-auto, non-refractor) leading off the previous Triad post last fall. If it were up to me, the 2005 Retired refractors would be black bordered (like '04), but the white looks fine too. And hey, in a perfect world, this would be in its original "uncirculated" case, but I'll leave it slabbed for now. Hell, I haven't bothered to take it out of the eBay "authenticity guarantee" bag yet.
I wasn't as lucky with efforts to secure a Ryne Sandberg from the set that recently sold for a lot.
I also still need to track down Bo's '03 Retired refractor auto someday.
But one '03 Retired I have tracked down is Tony Perez...
Nice looking card. This makes an even 100 different '03 Retired autos for me, counting both refractors and base autos. That's out of a total of 119 autographs in the set. So completing that in my lifetime might be possible, but probably not an all-refractor set. The guy I know doing that (Dan) is down to only Tommy Lasorda to finish his '03 refractor set, last I touched base with him.
Tony Perez has some extra juice in my collection thanks to his "Pads in the Hall" connection, playing for San Diego back when they were the Reds' top minor league team.
Ron Gant was one of my favorite dudes back during my initial collecting run as a kid in the early 90s when I'd watch lots of Braves games on TBS. I haven't gone after his cards as hard since returning to the hobby, but still have a soft spot for him, and had been waiting years for the chance to land his refractor auto from '05 Retired.
Here's another photo with a little warmer refraction. Like with '03 Retired, I'm down to needing just 19 more autos to complete the set (as a mix of base and refractors), currently with 96 of 115 signers available in 2005 Retired.
Stats are a bit blurry in photo, but he ended up with 321 taters and 1008 ribbies. It was cool for me when Ron had a solid season for my Padres in 2002 near the end of his career.
That'll do it. Until next time!
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