Just got this back from PSA. Think he’s going to break out this season?

I can’t really tell you why I decided to collect this set of inserts besides the fact that I liked how they looked and they had a fairly accessible price. These have the clean, high shine look of those early refractors we grew up with, and a print run of about 550 copies each—which is the sweet spot of you’re looking for affordable unnumbered SPs.
And while the rookie checklist leaves a lot to be desired (no Elly, Chourio, Merrill, or Langford), the veteran checklist was strong. I had a lot of fun building this set!
Easiest card to get was the Curtis Mead. Hardest was the Ohtani, as usual.

Two more for the Mini-Diamond rookie set project!

Similar to the previous iteration of these laser cut cards, platinum portraits, these 2013 Panini Portraits used similar laser technology to make a profile picture of the depicted player in the card. Not as fine in detail as the platinum portraits, these are still pretty cool. They are relatively common and not very rare, however, the silver, the gold, the red parallels are still sought after and not super easy to find. As a Colts fan, I usually only collect cards of Peyton in a Colts uniform, but I made an exception here as the price was too good to pass up.

Used my wife’s all-day conference in Seattle as an excuse to tag along for a day trip and take the boys to some local card/game shops.

The boys stocked up on Pokémon as expected. I got nostalgic when I saw a Marvel Metal Universe box and bought comic cards for the first time in 30 years. We didn’t pull a Precious Metal Gem, but we did get this cool numbered Comic Cuts slab. I had no idea this insert series existed until today. Now I’m hooked. Guess I’ll be adding these to the chase list.

Shout out to Brian at Collector’s Corner NW for helping us out today! We plan on making the trip from Portland often.