Goodbye Joey Votto!

This past week, Reds great Joey Votto finally called it a career.  After leaving the Reds in the past offseason, Joey signed on with the Blue Jays in a final attempt to play for his home country.  Unfortunately for Joey, he injured himself right away in spring training (after hitting a home run, no less) and basically never recovered back to his old self.  He called it quits last week having never stepped foot on a MLB field as a Blue Jay.  Thus, for Reds fans anyhow, Joey was a lifelong Cincinnati Red!

Loyal readers will know that I'm a huge Barry Larkin fan and collector, in no small part because he spent his entire career with the Reds.  What those same readers may not know is that I also have a modest personal collection of Joey Votto cards as well.  Now that Votto is retired, I could see myself chasing after more of his cards in addition to the cards of Barry.  I wonder if Topps will have a lot of love for Votto in future sets or if he'll kind of be forgotten like so many other players?!

While I can't answer what Topps will do, I can say that Votto won't be forgotten by me any time soon.  In fact, a couple of weeks ago I picked up the following card for my Larkin Collection and figured today was the perfect day to show it off since it also features Joey Votto!

I don't generally chase high-end relic sets but this card was too pretty to pass up.  The fact that it is serially numbered 100/199 doesn't hurt either as who doesn't like "hero" numbers?  

In summary, I think the above relic shows the two best lifelong Cincinnati Reds players in my lifetime.  For that reason alone, the relic was worth the bid on eBay!