Parallels

One of my favorite non-Yankees bloggers is the MetallAttorney. MA runs Red Sox Fan in Nebraska. So as you can probably tell, they're a Royals collector who lives in Idaho and works as a financial analyst while listening to Hootie & The Blowfish all day.

No, they're a Red Sox collector. They super collect Jason Varitek. And they're a lawyer.

As a Yankees fan those should be three giant strikes, but MetallAttorney is the first Red Sox collector I ever traded with (going back to my pre-blog days), and we've been eachother's go-to's for years now. It turned out to be the right move because Mark Hoyle already has every Red Sox thing ever made (so I send him Bruins and Patriots nowadays) and most of the other Red Sox blogs would end up going on hiatus or shutting down. MetallAttorney has also had a hiatus, but they've since returned and have continued to be my reliable Red Sox dumping grounds trading partner. They're also really knowledgeable about Boston prospects (I found out about Mookie Betts through them back in 2013), which allows me to prepare to laugh at the next Boston prospect to flop. On top of everything they listen to Heavy Metal music. Not exactly my go to genre, but when I'm in the right mood I'll head bang right along.

Recently MA sent me a package. It included a lot of Yankees goodies that I'm sure they were glad to get rid of. But the key highlight was this.

BOOM.

A base card of the 2018 Topps Series 2 Luis Torrens card.

Let me reiterate that I will never pass up a Torrens card if you offer it to me for free. I'm 100% ready to collect ALL OF THEM. Rare. Common. In between. Give me all of them. Tim Wallach Collector style ya'll!

But the Torrens card and MetallAttorney's most recent player collection has made me realize that as collectors we're cut from similar but not-quite-the-same cloth. In case you didn't know, MetallAttorney is an extreme player collector.

His Varitek collection is impressive and vast. It's as good as collections could ever hope to grow to be when the player is as widely known and popular as Varitek is. MetallAttorney also dedicated an entire blog to his Sandy Alomar Jr. collection too. Of course they maintain both while adding a third new collection and having an entire Red Sox collection to boot.

Basically I'm the extreme player collector who does it to the n-1th degree. Consider MA the collector who does it to the n-4th degree. The aforementioned Tim Wallach Collector is the nth degree player collector if you want a reference point for the insanest it could get.

MetallAttorney's most recent player collection is Taiwanese infielder Tzu-Wei "Tzunami" Lin. Lin is Topps' Red Sox rookie darling this season (along with Rafael Devers) and is popping up in tons of products. But he's a fun player to keep an eye on. Even as an opponent.

And yes, I do see parallels between Lin and Torrens. Mainly in terms of cards.

1). Both made their cardboard debuts in 2013 Bowman Chrome

2013 Bowman Chrome was initially seen as a weak offering that didn't have a ton going for it outside of Yasiel Puig. Of course in the years since it's grown in notoriety for having names like Miguel Andujar, Jose Berrios, Jake Lamb, Jose Peraza, Lance McCullers, Tyler Glasnow and Henry Owens (lmao) in the autograph checklist.

But it also gave us the first licensed cards of Luis Torrens and Tzu-Wei Lin. Currently MetallAttorney is working on the rainbow for the non-auto Lins. My motto with rainbows is that the window of opportunity closes after a product has been released for four years. Unfortunately the 2013 Bowman cards fall well into that category. But that won't stop MA from seeing how far they can go.

They have most of the easily found parallels down already. Now begins the long waiting game for the really exclusive stuff to pop up. When you consider that that includes even the gold refractors numbered to 50, that's when you get worried. In addition to the gold, there's the magenta (/35), red wave (/25), orange (/25), black (/15), yellow (/10), red (/5) and the superfractor (1/1).

Oof, that's tough. I had the luxury of starting out with the red refractor and lucked into the superfractor within the same year. Not to mention being able to track down the yellow/canary not long afterwards. I attribute that to me taking care of my rainbow before 2013 BoChro celebrated its second birthday. Collecting Bowman Chromes after a player made his MLB debut but before they do anything really of note yet is a tall task. Not with investors looking to hold onto their inventory until the market is set high enough for them to sell (which is usually never). This is especially made tougher since Lin probably has a following in Taiwan. Trust me, the Taiwanese do NOT mess around with trading cards.

So yeah, if you happen to see any of those low numbered refractors of Lin, give MetallAttorney a call.

2). Both had their MLB rookie cards in 2017 Topps Update

It's the rare duo that made their prospect card debut in the same product and their major league card debut in the same product. Of course Torrens reached the bigs in 2017 under entirely different circumstances than Lin did, but that is neither here nor there.

What this means is that MetallAttorney is working on the same Update rainbow I am. They've got me beat by having that /10 clear acetate parallel, but I have two aces in the hole in the form of the blank back 1/1 and a printing plate sent to me by the cardosphere's favorite madman, Wes.

Luckily for both of us the window of opportunity to complete these rainbows are still very much open. Maybe not as much as they were back in December of last year, but still relatively open. We're in the new pseudo-overproduction era now so these cards are harder to find and don't show up nearly as much. The chances of them having never been pulled and still sleeping in an unopened pack/box/case in some dingy card shop is fairly big. I've got my net extended across two countries in two different continents and I'm still not getting any bites.

So keep an eye on who completes their '17 Update player collection rainbow first, MetallAttorney or me.

3). Both have ties to the Yankees organization

This isn't a collecting parallel but still something I found interesting. Lin was originally slated to sign with the Yankees as an international amateur free agent. But politics surrounding relations between Taiwan and China stopped that from happening and he eventually signed with the Red Sox later. Damn it.

Meanwhile Torrens was originally a Yankees farmhand who was taken away by (originally the Cincinnati Reds before subsequently being traded to) the San Diego Padres in the 2016 Rule 5 Draft. I cry myself to sleep every night because of it.

So there we go. Two guys who should've been in the Yankees organization.

Anyway, I fully support MetallAttorney's mission to acquire as many different Lin cards as possible. I've built/have tried to build the same rainbows. I hope I can lend a hand here and there this time.

Of course when it comes to the millions of other cards Lin has, MetallAttorney's on their own there. That's P-Town Tom - Daniel Vogelbach territory.

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