Chasing the Rainbow: John Holdzkom Edition

2014 was a memorable season for the Pirates as they set out to prove that their double decade long losing streak being broken in 2013 wasn't a fluke.  There was a breakout campaign by Josh Harrison as he came close to winning the batting title.  Andrew McCutchen had another monster year as he contended for MVP discussion again. 

One of the truly amazing stories though was career minor leaguer turned independent ball gamer to urban legend reliever, John Holdzkom. 

While watching him in his brief stint in the Pirates minor league system I grew a fascination to make Chuck Norris like jokes about how legendary he could become. 
Striking out 3 batters on 3 pitches. 
Batters don't swing the bats against Holdzkom in fear of embarrassing themselves

He instantly became one of my favorite pitchers on the mound.

When Topps announced that he would have an autograph in Series 1, I instantly knew that I had to add that to my collection.  When he was announced as one of the signers for Chrome, I kept my eyes open for any lower numbered cards, but never saw the Superfractor pop up for sale.  I wasn't going to overpay for the other parallels and patiently waited.  Waited longer.  And finally a lot of 5 became available for $20.

Behold the start of my John Holdzkom 2015 Topps Chrome Rainbow.

 Refractor (463/499) Blue (137/150)
Purple 206/250) Green (80/99)

Base

McCutchen Mailday #53, 54, and 55: A trio of shiny Heritage Refractors

The latest quest for 100 new Cutch cards yielded me a 3 package mailday all featuring the same card, but different versions. I went aggressive trying to add as many non base variants of Cutch's Heritage card as possible when Heritage was first released.  The refractor and purple refractors were won off ebay and the black refractor was purchased from someone on Blowout Cards.

The black is very low numbered (only 66 copies)

Cutch is still struggling in this early season and I really hope that he can start to turn it around soon.

Green and Blue: Gerrit Cole 4 card lot

Late last year I purchased a 4 card lot of Gerrit Cole 2014 Bowman Chrome Refractors for a ridiculously good deal.  Included in the lot were base, base refractor (/500), blue refractor (/250), and green refractor (/75).

I've been saving them to show off for this month.  I hope you enjoy.

Sorry for the crooked scan for the base, but it slid during scan and I didn't have the patience to fix it.

Cole pitched well in his Spring Training debut going 2 innings, striking out 3, and allowing a hit and walk.

My new way of doing business on ebay

I recently decided that I'm going to buy in bulk.  I have been coming across some nice sized lots of players that aren't in my PC, but I still enjoy collecting and I have been buying them in bulk.  For $14 delivered I bought 35 cards of Pirates infield prospect Alen Hanson.  The lot included several refractors and even an autograph.

Did I get a lot of value out of the lot?  Probably not a lot, but to be able to add 14 new unique cards to my collection PLUS another Bowman Chrome Auto of the young switch hitting Dominican, I thought it was worth the price.

Among the numbered parallels were a 2013 Bowman Sterling refractor /199 and a 2013 Bowman Platinum Green Refractor /399.

I also got a lot of dupiclates in the bunch so if anyone is interested in some Alen Hanson cards, let me know.

Bubbles, bubbles, everywhere there's bubbles

Behold the beauty of a bubbles refractor.  For those of you that don't know, this is Topps/Bowman latest refractor gimmick parallel.  These actually look pretty neat though.

I mentioned last month that I would be starting a Willy Garcia PC.

McCutchen Monday: partial rainbow

I've been adding a lot of Andrew McCutchen parallels over the past few months.  Amongst them are the 4 below parallels of 2013 Bowman Chrome.  The scanner is having a hard time picking up the difference between blue and purple lately.

The 4 Refractor parallels ran me $7.50 delivered for the following cards: Refractor, Purple (53/199), Blue (42/250), XFractor.  The four cards go nicely with my Magenta Refractor I showed off in October for Save Second Base charity event.

Somewhere near a Rainbow: Russell Martin 2013 Topps Chrome

Even though, it's barely been 30 days, it feels like it's been forever since I showed off my last rainbow update for Russell Martin's 2013 Topps Chrome.

Here's my latest addition.  It ran me a solid 50 cents from COMC.  This is just your standard 2013 Topps Chrome Refractor, no color parallel.

I had already shown off a few of the rainbow parallels in the past

black numbered/100
camo numbered 10/15

gold numbered 34/50

red numbered 12/25 and sepia numbered 45/75