My Ryan Howard Top Ten

I was perusing the blogosphere and came across Collecting Cutch's latest contest.. show off your top ten cards of your favorite player. As regular readers of this blog and everyone I talk too in any situation (grocery store cashiers love me, trust me) I PC Ryan Howard and Frank Thomas. Huge fan of The Big Hurt from the 90s and Ryan Howard was my favorite Phillies player of the Championship era that just ended. Since this is a Phillies blog we will be showing my top ten for Mr. Howard. (He was invited to my wedding but not sure if he got the invitation)

Without further delay..

#10--

From Topps Marequee the Titanic Threads Auto. Always was a fan of this set even though most of the swatches (all?) are plain. I like the look of the cards. It took me a while to track down this low numbered one and ultimately purchase it on ebay.

#9--

I have almost every parallel from 2012 Topps Museum Collection. I have to take inventory again but I might just be missing a couple one of ones and that's it. This patch was very elusive. I remember it hitting right after release and the person wanted 500 or best offer. Way way out of my price range. I decided to just watch it for a while. It disappeared off ebay and then finally came back but with just a straight auction. I believe I picked it up in the 60 dollar range. I way way overbid to make sure no one could snipe me at the last second.

#8--

This my only Howard super auto. I traded a 2012 Topps Chrome Ichiro photo variation for it. Pulled the Ichiro in my case in 2012 and turned it into a Ryan Howard Super.. no complaints there!

#7--

Just love the look of these Triple Threads cards. The big patch windows and overall visual appeal of the card. Very well done and looks nice in the card room.

#6--

Ryan Howard's "Best" rookie auto. I believe at the peak of his hype after his MVP season this was well over a 1,000 dollar card. Thankfully I did not buy it back then. I got it a much more reasonable price. No Ryan Howard collection is complete without this rookie auto!

#5--

My first ever rainbow completion ended with this card. (I got the whole rainbow graded after the fact). This was my big foray into really collecting a player. It was real fun tracking all the cards down and getting them all.

#4--

I'm counting this as one card. It's my 2012 Triple Threads Ruby 'set'. All 3 1/1's for the saying's he had in this set. The patches are very colorful. '198 Homers in 4 Yrs' '.313 58 149 2nd Season' and of course his nickname 'The Big Piece'. Never thought I'd see all 3 let alone be in position to acquire all 3.

#3--

My one and only bat knob card in my collection from Topps Tier one. Very well done cards and always a conversation starter.

#2--

My one and only bat nameplate card. It's real cool his whole name is in the window and easily one of my favorite Museum Collection cards in general. This card is super thick.

Last but not least my personal #1--

Yes this is one of 4 superfractors I own of Howard, but this one was 2 straight years of searching until it surfaced. I had every other parallel fairly easily except this one. It popped up on ebay one day before I was set to leave on my honeymoon with my lovely wife. It was up for auction but I didn't have time for that so I messaged the guy on ebay and offered him a more then fair sum. We agreed on the amount but he wanted gift and to take the purchase off ebay. (all big red flags I know) I vetted his feed back (all looked solid) and just said screw it and went for it. I gifted him the money and just hoped he was an honest person. I asked him to hold the card while I was away. I emailed him after the honeymoon and then he mailed the card to me. No problems or hiccups!

I will say it was fun going through my Ryan Howard scans to pick out 10 cards. I had picked out about 20 then had to narrow it down.

Thanks for reading!