It's a 2006 Upper Deck Ovation gold parallel of Ichiro. I really miss Ovation and the Upper Deck brand in general. If you aren't familiar with Ovation the cards are embossed and have a great texture to them. The stitches of the ball as well as the player photo all stand out.
The regular base cards feature silver foil, so for the gold parallels all the silver foil is replaced with gold foil and it's serial numbered on the right side to 499.
These gold parallels were inserted at a rate 1:18 packs. There were only 18 packs per box, so that makes these parallels one per box. The set contains 126 cards, but the last 42 are a rookie subset and the gold parallels of these are autographed and numbered to 99, so there are 84 cards that have a gold parallel numbered to 499. This means if you bought 84 boxes you might get one of these gold parallels of Ichiro.
Ichiro called it quits earlier this year and put an end to an amazing career that included 9 seasons in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan and 18 years in Major League Baseball. He's a first ballot Hall of Famer in my opinion and I'm happy to add this card to my collection.
I'd like to hear somebody's argument against him not being a first ballot HOF'er, although I can't imagine that anyone could possibly believe such a thing.
ReplyDeleteAwesome card! I'd have no problem with Ichiro being a first ballot hall of famer.
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