Collecting Gold - More from Ron

When you've curated a collection such as this one, you can sometimes hit lulls in adding new pieces to the collection. Sure, there will be a new card here or there, but for the most part, it starts to get tough finding a card that you've been trying to track down for what seems like ages.

And then you strike gold! Collecting gold, that is.

I met a fellow collector named Ron (read more about that here) who was liquidating his collection. This post is basically a continuation of that one because after I got that initial shipment of cards and memorabilia from Ron, I got another one! The second one would have been massive in its own right, but when you consider that these cards were all from the same collection, it begins to become mind-blowing! All of these amazing cards were sitting in one guy's collection for all these years. The crazy thing is, I considered my collection rather impressive, but it's like Ron's collection meshed perfectly with mine, filling in many blank spaces I have had for quite some time!

The vast majority of these cards below were new to my collection. There are a handful of them that I already owned, but they either have unique enough patches that I wanted to add them to my collection, or they are serial numbered and Ron had the jersey numbered copy of the card. That's my newest little "collection within a collection" that I've found quite addicting.

1995

For cards this early on in Rolen's career, there aren't many options to collect (I have them all). I really like finding period correct on-card autographs such as this one though.

1998

There is a lot going on here. We've got a Bowman Chrome card that is just the front of the card; completely missing the back. Then we have the Donruss Preferred tins that are still sealed. The gold one is actually the error and it's serial numbered to 999 instead of 199 like they were supposed to be. The Leaf Rookies & Stars Longevity card was a condition upgrade for me. My fist copy has some misalignment with the foil on the front. Then we've got some really tough to find Pacific cards here. The Skybox Dugout Axcess is the Inside Axcess parallel - limited to just 50 copies! And lastly we've got probably on of my all-time favorite Rolen cards, the 1998 Topps Rookie Cup card. This one is completely missing the foil on the front of the card. I'm sure there's not a huge market out there for a "misprint" like this one, but I absolutely love cards like this!

1999

This grouping of cards is bonkers! We'll start with the Bowman Chrome Gold Refractor, serial numbered to just 25 copies. I'm glad I was able to get that card in this collection because if that one alone were to go to auction, I can only imagine just how high that card would go! We've also got the FroZsnack's ice cream lid in blue. I've had the orange and green ones for years now, but I could never track down the blue - until now. Of course we also have several more of those gorgeous and tough to find Pacific cards here. I can't decide which one of them is my favorite, but I think it's a close race between the Prism Holographic Blue missing the serial number and the Revolution Shadow Series. They are all such great cards though! We wrap up 1999 with a couple of Upper Deck cards. The Wonder Years card is the "Triple" serial numbered to just 50 copies and the Encore is the stunning FX Gold parallel.

2000

We start this portion of the collection with that Bowman Gold card serial numbered to 99 copies, of which this one is numbered 17! Another smattering of Pacific cards here that I'm really grateful to be able to add to the collection. Special shout out goes to that Crown Royale Final Numbers card. This one is from the 2000 National in Anaheim, CA. It is stamped and hand serial numbered to just 10! Incredibly tough card to find. And lastly, I'd like to point out that Upper Deck MVP card. You can't really tell by just looking at this scan, but yes, that is the Super Script! They are numbered to 25 and incredibly tough to track down. That is another card that I'm happy to have picked up in this collection as opposed to having to bid my heart out in an open auction!

2001

While picking favorite cards in my collection would be akin to picking one's favorite child, I do have a few here that I'd like to call out. First, check out those Pacific Game Jersey cards. Yes, they're "duplicates" for my collection, but how could one not appreciate the uniqueness of each of these cards. I mean, one of them has the tag from Rolen's jersey and it can be clearly seen that the jersey was made of polyester and it has an extra 2" of length - that's awesome! I'm also a big fan of the Stadium Club Super Teams Exchange card. That's something you just don't see listed for sale every day. And finally, the pièce de résistance, the Topps Gold Label Class 3 Masterpiece! This is a card I've seen on my checklist for years, always wondering whatever happened to it. Little did I know, 24 years after its release, I would be the holder of this card. It is more beautiful than words! The shine, the etching, the photos, everything about this card is...ineffable!

2002

As you can see, 2002 was a big year for Rolen cards here. We'll start off by talking about that Diamond Kings sample card. This version of the card has gold foil on the front and "sample" is also stamped in gold foil. With both of those being true, that tells me this card was found with the May 2002 issue of Beckett magazine. Since the word "sample" on the back is in gold, that means it's rare! I'm not sure what the overall print run was on these Beckett sample cards, but only 10% of them were released with the gold foil "sample". That's a big time player collector type card there! Another fun player collector type card here is the Flair Collection card. These cards were supposed to be serial numbered to 175 copies, but the one I have here has some handwriting on it in the area where the serial number was supposed to be. I'm not sure if this was a "replacement" card that made it out somehow or what it is, but it's a cool little piece for the collection. We'll wrap this one up with the Fleer EX - Behind the Numbers cards. With the addition of these, I have seven of them now. What I really like about these is the uniqueness of the jersey swatches they used. This is before "prime" or "patch" cards were really a thing. So you'll see many different cuts of the jersey being used in cards like this. While I don't add them in my overall unique Rolen card count, I do like adding these cards - especially when they've got a piece of the 1996 MLB All-Star Game shoulder patch.

2003

I didn't add many cards from this year to the collection, but these Donruss Timeless Treasures cards are pretty sweet. And if you look at them closely, you'll see this is about the time card companies identified these prime pieces of the jerseys they were cutting up. Here we have a copy of a logo patch (numbered to 50), a letter patch (numbered to 15), and a patch (numbered to 10). And if you have really keen eyes, you'll notice that the patch they used was the shoulder patch from the 1996 MLB All-Star game like in the Fleer EX cards from 2002 above.

2004

What a year for Rolen cards! There were so many different cards made for him in 2004, it's tough to get them all. I was able to obtain a large number of them from this one collection though. This collection of Leaf Limited cards is hands down the largest I've ever seen all in one place. I'm glad I was able to come to an agreement on price for these cards. As you can see here, the Monikers Gold card - I now own three of the five copies out there. I'm not sure I'll ever try to find the other two in order to have the full run. It's more likely that I'll eventually sell or trade a couple of these to keep the new cards coming in. Another thing to note, regarding the Fleer Hot Prospects Draft Edition Double Team patch cards, the first one here looks like they used two pieces from a Cardinals jersey while the second copy looks as if they used one piece from a Cardinals jersey and one piece from a Phillies jersey. Either way, they're different enough that I wanted them both in my collection.

2005

Another giant year for Rolen cards on the checklist. There are 1,400 Rolen cards on my checklist for 2005 alone. Absolutely bonkers! So, while adding these 21 cards to my collection definitely moved the needle, it barely moved it. The Diamond Kings cards may very well be the death of me. There are so many different cards, foils, and combinations of frames and game used jerseys and bats...it's nearly overwhelming sometimes. I definitely have to have my checklist handy when going through and buying any of these to ensure I'm not buying ones I already have. Oh, and I forgot to mention, there are also errors in this set for which there is no checklist. I've come across a few of those during my searches. The 2001 Fleer Tradition Turn Back the Clock was a head-scratcher for me. It is hand serial numbered and it has an ever so faint embossed stamp on the surface of the card. Through some searching on TCDB, I was able to figure out that it was an official buyback for the 2005 Fleer National Pastime set. The Leaf Century stamp card is really cool and it was the last one I needed to complete that "rainbow". It's not a huge rainbow by any means, just four different stamps used on different color cards using the same design.

2006, 2007, 2008

Ron didn't collect much past 2005. He's a Phillies guy though, so when Rolen was traded to the Cardinals in 2002, Ron primarily focused on just picking up Rolen cards in Phillies uniforms. He did let some Cardinals uniform cards sneak into his collection though. But after 2005, Ron wasn't picking up much in the way of new Rolen cards. He did have these three post-2005 cards that I needed in my collection. A couple of Topps Triple Threads and this Topps Moments & Milestones card. The 2006 Triple Threads card is a beautiful shiny gold card and includes three pieces of bat. They could very well all be the same bat that was kicked around the dugout in the 2005 season though - we'll likely never know the full truth on game used. The 2007 Triple Threads card showcases some Rookie of the Year winners. Clearly, Rolen is the star of this card (he's in the middle). He shares the card with Ryan Howard and some guy named Albert Pujols. So, one Hall of Famer and a couple other decent guys there on that card. That brings us to the 2008 Topps Moments & Milestones card. I'm not a huge fan of these cards as it seems absurd to me to have a "unique" card for each thing in a series of events. For Rolen in this set, they highlight his 21 home runs. So there are 21 "different" cards. Then you layer on the fact that this is actually a parallel that is serial numbered to 10 copies and you've got yourself a huge pile of cards once you've collected them all. And to those with really discerning eyes, you already know that there is a typographical error on all of these cards (that was never corrected). It says he won the NL ROY in 2001 which we all know actually happened back in 1997.

I've purchased multiple Rolen collections over the years and with each one I've been able to add several new cards to my own collection. A couple of the collections landed me some really big cards (thanks to Ron in Jasper and Mike from Texas). But this collection is by far the largest I've ever acquired. The largest in sheer number of new unique cards I was able to add to my collection (over 150) as well as the insane amount of other memorabilia and collectibles I was able to buy. I really do appreciate the opportunity to meet Ron and get to know him a little bit and I promise I'll be a good steward of this collection that we've collected together!

So there you have it - a truly unique experience! Thank you for following along!