Barry Larkin
Year: 1996
Brand: Finest
Parallel: Refractor
Card number: 7
Let's start with the fact that I've never understood why Finest is known as "Finest" as opposed to "Topps Finest." With other brands, we say "Topps Chrome" or "Topps Allen & Ginter," but with Finest is simply "Finest" without the Topps label. Ultra is the same way for Fleer, and I don't understand that one either!
With that little bit of mystery out of my mind, let's turn our attention to today's card at hand. This is the Refractor parallel of Larkin's Sterling subset base card. Barry has three different base cards in the 1996 Finest set, but only the Sterling version is considered "uncommon" - the other two are both of the common variety. I can only assume that a Refractor an uncommon card is harder to find than a common base Refractor, but like many things related to mid-90s cardboard, I could be very wrong about that!
Overall, you can't go wrong with the shiny Refractor look. In fact, while I don't love the 1996 Finest set, I could definitely get behind the set if all the cards had the Refractor treatment. With the extra shine, this is a sharp-looking card indeed! And yes, I hold it in much higher esteem as compared to the base version of this card which I reviewed about 700 Barry Larkin card posts ago!
Congratulations! What a great looking card. According to Beckett, the silver (uncommon refractors) were inserted into packs at a rate of 1:48 packs (or 1 in 2 boxes). I recently just added the Rickey Henderson silver refractor to my collection.
ReplyDeleteWhen viewed in person this is probably one of the best looking Finest sets ever produced. Get a peeled version if you can, they are even better looking. Regarding the naming convention, early price guides initially included the Topps and Fleer names as part of their cataloging these releases. I think things shifted when other manufacturers rushed to both expand their product lines and introduce parallels. Inclusion of the manufacturer name was kept for what were essentially parallel products (e.g. Topps Chrome) but omitted for sets that were altogether different in appearance (e.g. Finest, Ultra, Collector's Choice).
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