Dragging out a couple nice Adrian Beltre additions

I kicked up my Adrian Beltre collection recently by scoring a couple autographed cards.

I dressed this one up with a custom overlay from that crazy moment this past season when the ump told Adrian he needed to be on the on-deck circle, so he picked up the circle and dragged it over to where he had been standing. That was pretty great, but the ump wasn't amused and quickly tossed him from the game. Apparently it was too naughty to get a Topps Now card, but the quirkiness was right in my wheelhouse, and so I whipped up a custom overlay spicing up an otherwise boring auto card.

Here's what the original card looks like naked. It's actually kinda cool because it has a metal nameplate embedded in it. Low-numbered, too. The whitewashed uniform is a drag, though.

And the other pickup...

This one needs no custom overlay, as it's a very nice looking card as-is. It's a special Topps Now card commemorating Adrian's 3000th hit, an incredible milestone he reached at the end of July. I'm not sure how much Topps was originally selling these for, but I think I got a good deal on this from a secondary-market eBay auction, perhaps in part thanks to a slightly dinged lower left corner from when someone must have been dragging it around.

Stop Draggin' My Card Around

Shiny back. This is like my 3rd or 4th Topps Now card of 2017, but my first ever "hit" Now card. A couple things I'd like to see added next year are shiny fronts and serial-numbering (on the regular cards, not just hits). But I'm not holding my breath.

So there are a pair of nice additions to boost my Beltre PC. It's been one of my favorite player collections to build over this past year or so, and it's nice to bring in a couple cool hits like these to be focal points.