Pointless Sets, Relic Parallels, and Other Nonsense.

I have a small table that sits behind my desk in my "man cave."  On that table, I usually put incoming mail packages as well as my own personal baseball cards that I still need to sort through.  In addition, once the semester starts up that table also holds grading that I need to do, lesson plan materials, etc.  It all adds up quickly!  Thus, it's not super surprising to me that I somehow managed to cover up the last few cards from my COMC order (that I received a few months ago now) and never did get around to posting the final batch of cards.

Well, today I'm righting that wrong - and clearing off the tiniest bit of the table in the process.  I'll call that a win-win.

The last few cards from my COMC order are all Barry Larkin cards from the year 2021 - not so coincidentally, the year 2021 is also the last year for which my Barry Larkin Collection is fully sorted and organized (and thus, I knew which cards I did - and didn't - already own when making the order)!  We'll start with what most people would probably consider the highlight of the batch:  

That's a 2021 Topps All-Star Baseball Relic Black parallel and it's numbered out of 199 on the back of the card.  I feel like Barry Larkin relics have actually been easier to acquire in recent years, perhaps because Topps has included Larkin in so many of its newer products?  No matter, I'll take a nice looking Larkin relic parallel when I can get it - so definitely happy to have this one in my collection.

Next, sticking with black backgrounds I bought the 2021 Allen & Ginter X base card of Barry's.

Somehow, that base card had eluded me for two years - and while they aren't rare, I'm happy to have one for my collection (especially since it's from an Allen & Ginter adjacent set)!

Speaking of Ginter adjacent, how about Chrome Allen & Ginter?

That's a regular mini of Barry from the 2021 Allen & Ginter Chrome set.  I do like the look of the Ginter Chrome cards but in my experience the box opening experience is rarely worth the price.  It's much more economical to simply pick off the few cards that I want from the set on the secondary market!

Sticking with mini-sized cards, I also bought this 2021 Topps 206 mini of Larkin.  

I don't know much about this set other than I believe it was an online-only release.  I kind of hate the concept of online-only set releases though I don't know what that is seeing as how 99% of my baseball card purchases happen online.  I guess its the principle of the thing that sets like this aren't available in any brick-and-mortar stores that makes me a little sad.  Completely irrational thought process, I admit.

Finally, speaking of irrational - how about this weirdly-named Topps X Derek Jeter set from 2021?

I have no idea what this is, other than again I believe it's from another online-only release.  

And with that, I'm finally done showing off all the cards I bought back in June.  I guess if nothing else I know how to milk a single card purchase for a lot of blog content...kind of something you have to do if you want to have lots of blog posts without spending tons of money on new stuff all the time!  Then again, given my long and convoluted process of adding incoming Barry Larkin cards to my collection, you can't blame me for taking a long time!