McCutchen Monday: The Nicest Cutch Auto I own

My current favorite player in baseball is Andrew McCutchen.  Quite honestly, he might be my favorite player I've ever gotten a chance to see play. I currently own almost 300 unique cards of Cutch and hope to get that number closer to 400 by the end of the year.  Amongst my cardboard collection of Cutch are many autographs, over a dozen 1/1s, and almost enough jersey material to put his jersey back together.  Back in 2011, I created Morton Mondays, but with the lack of Charlie Morton cards available, I changed it to McCutchen Mondays so each Monday I will show off one new card from my Cutch collection.

To see all my Andrew McCutchen relics, autos, printing plates, manupatches, etc ... check out this link.

Come with me McFly...

We're going all the way back to 2004 when Bowman introduced redemption cards for a set of cards from the AFLAC High School All American game.  Some of the notable players in the series included Cameron Maybin, Andrew McCutchen, Chris Volstad, CJ Henry, and Justin Upton.  Like all things Topps, the sets were delayed and not shipped until 2006.  The Gold Refractors which were originally intended to be a limited run of 50 accidently had over 50 redemption cards slip into packs which caused them to be delayed even more.  Topps asked customers if they wanted a 3 card auto set consisting of CJ Henry, Andrew McCutchen, and Cameron Maybin or the gold refractor set.  Number one overall selection Justin Upton was later added to the set as well.  The gold refractor set was shipped before the auto set and the final print run of the auto set was 125 copies with 90 in current circulation.

I've been after one of these since I can remember.  They typically start ungraded around $400.  If you want a nice grade, well...you can be looking at up to a grand for this card. I was fortunate though that mine ran me just over $400.

I decided I was going to splurge on the MVP candidate and grab this card graded.  It has two very nice subgrades with 10s on Centering and Surface.  The Edges are graded a 9.5 and corners are graded a 9.  The on card auto is graded a 10.

This is my second graded Cutch auto and I got to say, it's by far my favorite Cutch auto I own.  It's got everything I love about baseball cards.
Highly touted prospect - CHECK
On Card AUTO- CHECK
Low Print Number - CHECK
Chrome - CHECK
my favorite player - CHECK
high grade - CHECK

YUP! This is staying with me in the forever pile.