Slow Yet Not So Steady

Apparently I am not the only one buying Luis Torrens cards.

A while ago I was outbid for a second printing plate of his that popped up on eBay. And someone actually paid money on a Platinum parallel 1/1 of Torrens too.

Those people are people looking to get Torrens cards for me, or they're the most die hard Padres collectors ever. In either scenario, I've lost my will to go after the Series 2 Torrens rainbow.

Still, when I get decent deals I take them. Like when I got this sparkle foil parallel for roughly 60 cents (shipping cost me six times that though).

Normally I wouldn't bother spending money on parallels numbered to anything over 50 until a good four years after the set's release, but this is one of those "factory set exclusive" parallels that you don't see too often if you're a player collector. So I pounced on it.

I also got two parallels of Torrens. A Father's Day Powder Blue and a vintage stock. A Japanese collector who currently lives in Connecticut found me through mutual friends on Twitter and a few DMs later I got these in my hands through them.

Lastly I finally got the base card thanks to a special package from Night Owl Cards. You know 2018 has gotten weirdly out of control when even Night Owl is sending me Luis Torrens cards.

As a sign of contempt, N.O. included cards of Padres prospects that I plan on giving to Gavin. I love prospects, but as time has gone on I've come to really think negatively of the Padres. Their system is loaded and has both high caliber top heavy talent in addition to depth in the lower parts too. But I'm concerned they're going to mess up Torrens' development. I can feel it. Austin Hedges is terrible and probably an indicator of what's to come for pretty much all of their catching prospects. Granted he's a holdover from the previous regime and probably just a stop-gap until the real catchers that AJ Preller is banking on arrive like Francisco Mejia, Austin Allen and Luis Campusano. Although all of them are at risk of ending up falling far below expectations. Mejia's likely going to turn into an OFer making his bat significantly less valuable and Allen's probably more of a 1B at this point. Campusano shows potential but, he's a Padre.
That same wart is what plagues Torrens. Someone free him before the Padres hurt him by virtue of being a Padre.

Well okay, this is probably a bit too harsh on my part on the Padres. At least they don't make terrible blunders like trade/sign human trash accused of domestic violence charges or contemplating signing convicted sex offenders. A low bar to hold any MLB team to, but I'm finding that that bar isn't as low as you'd think (for reference Yankees have their own piece of human garbage closing out their games). We'll see what happens when they're finally ready for a playoff push and will have to pit the values they have for players against their own values/morals and see which wins.

Night Owl also made sure to send along some nice cards like Andres Gimenez (one of the few Mets prospects worth caring about), Jon Duplantier (who is already up in double-A, woof), and a bunch of Yankees. Some of which were Aaron Judge and one of the 2018 wonderkins, Miguel Andujar.

Big thanks to Night Owl for the cards though. I needed that base card :).

So yeah, I'm building this rainbow, but extremely slowly. My top priorities are the lower numbered stuff (like 25 and below) and then seeing where the others fall as the calendar turns from 2018 to 2019 and 2020 (and beyond). This is my recommendation for anyone looking to start a rainbow BTW. Lowest serials and rarities first, focus on the rest later.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).