The Black Refractor Rises

I think a superhero named Black Refractor would be pretty kickass. He could team up with Black Panther and Batman or whoever—yes, he would be badass enough to jump between Marvel and DC universes—fighting the forces of evil. He would be a ninja and probably blast out refracted light lasers from his body (basically shooting rainbows at bad guys).

But anyways, yeah, I'm a big fan of black refractors. A unique thing about them is they're actually the least refractory of true refractors, technically speaking. Other refractors have a rainbow sheen over the entire card, whereas black refractors generally don't actually refract on the black part of the card. It's true; check it out for yourself when you get the chance. The blackness sucks in light like a blackhole. But this helps the parts of the card that do refract to really pop and give the viewer an complex and satisfying viewing experience.

Below are some black refractors I've added to my collection recently. Of course, you can't fully appreciate a refractor on your screen because in-hand your right and left eyes each see it in a different light, triggering the pleasure sensors of a collector's brain, secreting high levels of pheromones, along with dopamine and endorphins. That's just a science fact!

Nomar! ("NO mah!") I've still got a few big names left to chase with the Chrome-Town Heroes relic inserts from 2004 Chrome, but if I keep on plucking a good deal here and there, I'll be closing in on the 21-card set before too long.

Also grabbed a handful of cheap 2004 Chrome black refractors in my recent COMC order. No huge names here, but this lot helped me crack 30% complete with my long-term goal of finishing this set with black refractors.

I'm also working on a parallel frankenset of 2011 Topps (+ Chrome), though with this one, I'm using a mix of all parallels, not just black ones. Found a couple reasonably priced 2011 Chrome black refractors on COMC for slots I needed. These are #'d /100 on the back, so they're harder to find cheap. This is a massive project of mine, so these two cards didn't even tickle my completion percentage, but still nice to get some more black refraction in there.

Christian Villanueva has been a breakout surprise for the Padres this season, leading the club in HR (17) and RBI (41). Those power numbers might get the 27 year old rookie some ROY consideration, but it'd be nice to get that batting average up (.230).

The best thing about this 2013 Bowman Chrome mini?...

Christmas Card, baby!

Pretty happy to have scored that card on COMC right before he started making waves, but the black refractor of the post I'm most excited about is...

This one takes my collecting "magic number" from 17 down to 16. Once I finally achieve my ultimate collecting goal of completing the 2004 Topps Retired refractor autos, I will retire from collecting. (ok, I probably won't really, but it'd be all gravy from there.)

The Sweet Sixteen left are:
Aaron
Banks
Musial
Snider
Schmidt
Molitor
Dent
Geronimo
Hershiser
Cobra
Trammell
Daulton
Joyner
Key
McDowell
Nettles

Most of those I haven't ever even seen available, so it's really a waiting game. This Armas I've only seen once before, as a Buy-It-Now for like twice as much as I paid for this one, so I'm glad I had patience and didn't over pay a year or two ago.

Check out this bodacious ta-ta! (see the card number in the upper left.) Tony Armas isn't exactly talked about much these days, but he had a real nice peak of about 6 years when he was one of the most feared sluggers in the AL.

Well, thanks for checking out this group of black refractors with me. Have a great weekend!