Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Timely redemption arrival

I was worried they wouldn't come, but finally my 2019 Bowman 1989 Buyback autographs of Tino Martinez have arrived!

I started seeing others in the set pop up on eBay, and admittedly got nervous Topps wasn't going to track Tino down to sign his batch. But then I got an out-of-the-blue email from Topps saying that my cards had shipped!

In all, I received both autographs that I was supposed to. The first redemption was one I pulled on my own, while the second was a gift from Collecting Cutch:
I was surprised to see these were #d to 50, since that wasn't apparent from the redemption card. I was also surprised that I didn't receive sequentially numbered cards. Were they pulled at different times to ship? Randomly? Maybe the cards were never in numerical 1-50 order to start with.

Secretly, I was hoping for #24/50, but it wasn't meant to be. I did some digging to see if I could find any significance in #s 9 or 49 as it related to Tino's career. I was able to find a good nugget for each number:

9 - The number of post-season HRs Tino hit.
49 - The number of RBIs Tino had in 2005, his final season.

The cards used in the buyback autos are a little worn. I wonder how Topps sources buyback cards? Do they have a warehouse of old cards? Do they strike up a deal with COMC for the original cards they need? Does an intern scour ebay/sportlots/etc for the designated number of copies? Maybe Sooz knows!

Regardless, I'm happy to get these. A replacement autograph really would have stunk.

7 comments:

  1. /50's are nice, but getting the 1/1 one day might be even nicer... ;)

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  2. Cool pickups there! It's interesting to compare the 1989 printed signature with the 2019 on-card autograph.

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  3. I've always wondered about the buybacks and how Topps comes to have them. I remember a promotion they held 7 or 8 years ago where they were asking people to bring old cards to their LCS for in return for a promotional pack or something to that extent. I wonder if that's how they came across beat up copies of Tino.

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  4. Nice to see a positive story regarding Topps' redemptions for a change. It was really neat of Brian to hook you up with that other one too. 2 down... 48 to go?

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