Collecting the Rainbow - A daunting task
Did you know that this set including the base card has a total of 60 different variations for each player in the 330-card set (not including inserts or autos). Each player has a total of 34 different numbered variations totaling 2002 cards. Lillard’s card #116 has 2002 numbered variations floating out there in the wild! I think I have maybe 60-70ish. It sure makes it hard to collect the rainbow over here… LOL
It dawned on me the other day as I began to sift through hundreds and hundreds numbered Lillard cards. It’s hard to admit but quite clear at this point. I am too scattered with my collection. I have numbered Lillard cards from a plethora of sets and really not enough goals with which sets I want to focus on the most.
There are just too many numbered cards out there. 2023-24 Prizm has bumped it up to 3083 total numbered cards per player in the main card set. That is a crazy increase over the years. I like the Gold Standard series, Donruss is fun, older Select, older Optic, his early Leaf autos, and of course Prizm. The 2021-22 Prizm Lillard, AKA the white headband Lillard, is probably my favorite Prizm card of his. This particular year of Prizm, including the base card has 60 different variations, 34 of which are numbered cards. The 1/1 cards are all in the hands of Lillard Super collectors, as are most of the golds, so for now those are out of the question. Hopefully down the road I can make some deals to get some of those. I got lucky enough to get the Green Shimmer numbered to five, a blue shimmer, the 75th parallel anniversary edition and some mojos, etc. My favorite numbered parallel of this set is actually the least rare, the red parallel numbered to 299. I have about fifteen of them and always an item I keep my eye out for. That is what makes the hobby so fun! There is something for everyone. We all collect cards in our own way, and it just feels great when we are able to find the numbered version of the cards we are looking for. I will continue to hunt more of his 2021 Prizm cards out in the wild and maybe even part with some of his other numbered cards to reach my goal of collecting more 2021-22 Prizm variations.
But this all brings up a very important thing to consider. It’s a fact folks, the card industry is saturated with more parallels than ever. Just look at the Prizm set I mentioned above. Prizm is becoming a very hard set to collect them all! Simply too many parallels. On one hand, it creates a fun goal of chasing the 34 different parallels, but it would be cool if it was more like 10-15, maybe 20. I think moving forward it would be great for the industry to focus on less parallels. What do you all think?
