Card of the Day - 2011 Topps Update : Mike Trout Base Target Red Parallel BGS Graded Gem Mint 9.5

Oh....my....!!!

As we near(ed) the 2016 baseball season (at the time of this write up) I thought I was done with picking up graded Trout cards from the 2011 Bowman Chrome and/or Topps Update sets. Over the past 5 months I was able to get my hands on most that were on my checklist but I still had a few biggies left to get and was resigned to the fact that I would not get them all before the new season started. I thought I did quite well and was happy with what I was able to pick up and between the 2 sets I had a total of 5 cards left I wanted to acquire. Well that number is now down to 4 with this big acquisition on what I believed was going to be the hardest one to find.

Unlike the Bowman Chrome blue parallel that I am still trying to find this red parallel from the Topps Update set is not numbered but it seems to be more rare and considering it was only available at Target and it is a paper card (unlike the thicker chrome stock) which makes it more condition sensitive, I thought I would never be able to land a BGS 9.5 anytime soon. Guess you can never say never.

There have only been a handful of raw version of this to pop up on eBay and 1 actually said it was damaged so I had no interest in those. Graded copies are even more rare and doing a quick check on Beckett there are only 11 9.5's of this card. Small population indeed. A seller put this up on eBay (later I found out she had 2 which means she almost had 20% of the total population of this graded card) and it went unsold for a couple of weeks even though it had double digit watchers. I was actually surprised. She finally relisted it with a best offer option and I sent over an offer for less than what a raw one went for. Wasn't surprised she rejected it but was happy she sent over an offer that was pretty reasonable. I decided to try to nickel and dime her a little and sent over another offer and stated that if she would take it I would pay right then and there. She accepted and with the final cost being only slightly over the raw cards that had previously sold I say I came out pretty good.

Of all the non autograph rookie cards this is one of the nicer Trout cards to have and think it is a pretty good investment piece. Can't believe I picked this up before the season started but happy I did. I plan to revisit this card for a price check in October and I bet it will have gone up in value as I predict Mike is going to put up a monster year in 2016.

Thank you for reading and have a blessed day.

-Penguin