Barry Larkin
Year: 1999
Brand: Topps Stars 'N Steel
Card number: 16
Remember back when card companies took lots of risks and did all sorts of weird things? Well, the late 90s, early 00s are probably the best era for "creativity" even if some of the efforts fell flat. For my money, the Topps Stars 'N Steel set was a pretty neat idea - basically Topps printed baseball cards on slabs of metal rather than cardboard. That's right, every card in the set was metal (.25 gauge metal to be more precise).
Along with Larkin's lone base card (the set is only 44 cards large), there are also two parallels: a gold parallel (which were seeded 1:12 packs) and a Gold Domed Holographic which were twice as rare (seeded 1:24 packs). Back in the day, this set was sold with three cards per pack (and each pack retailed for $9.99). I didn't ever see this product near a store near me - this Larkin card was acquired well after the Stars 'N Steel set was released. That said, if I had lots and lots of money, I wouldn't mind putting this set together (and I'm curious as to what the two parallels look like - I have a feeling you'd have to hold the cards in your hand, as opposed to only looking at images on the web, to get a good feeling for how nice the cards actually are!
One more side note: I should point out that while this is the only 1999 Topps Stars 'N Steel card that I own, it is NOT the only all-metal Barry Larkin card that I own!
Year: 1999
Brand: Topps Stars 'N Steel
Card number: 16
Remember back when card companies took lots of risks and did all sorts of weird things? Well, the late 90s, early 00s are probably the best era for "creativity" even if some of the efforts fell flat. For my money, the Topps Stars 'N Steel set was a pretty neat idea - basically Topps printed baseball cards on slabs of metal rather than cardboard. That's right, every card in the set was metal (.25 gauge metal to be more precise).
Along with Larkin's lone base card (the set is only 44 cards large), there are also two parallels: a gold parallel (which were seeded 1:12 packs) and a Gold Domed Holographic which were twice as rare (seeded 1:24 packs). Back in the day, this set was sold with three cards per pack (and each pack retailed for $9.99). I didn't ever see this product near a store near me - this Larkin card was acquired well after the Stars 'N Steel set was released. That said, if I had lots and lots of money, I wouldn't mind putting this set together (and I'm curious as to what the two parallels look like - I have a feeling you'd have to hold the cards in your hand, as opposed to only looking at images on the web, to get a good feeling for how nice the cards actually are!
One more side note: I should point out that while this is the only 1999 Topps Stars 'N Steel card that I own, it is NOT the only all-metal Barry Larkin card that I own!
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