The crown jewels & the card community

Every collector has a handful of cards they consider their personal crown jewels. Some have some insane collections where they have a handful of cards worth as much as my house. Well...maybe closer to being worth more than my car, Either way the beauty of this hobby and the people I have met online is that no matter what income level or amount of  money invested in your own pc we all cherish and respect and applaud each other's collections,hits,lucky finds personal crown jewels just the same.  Before I entered the cyber world of forums,blogs and social media contacts for the hobby I was in my own little world the first couple years collecting and talking to myself wondering if I was alone as my family and friends thought I was simply weird taking up the hobby again after 20 years away. The last year or so I discovered many other folk just like me and all of a sudden this awkward solitary feeling turned to fun and excitement of sharing my collection, talking about the hobby and seeing other people's collections.  Some do this as a side business or to make a profit which is totally fine. I occasionally sell cards not part of my pc from box breaks and such but I'm in it primarily for the joy of the hobby and collecting my pc players.

    So back to where I started, I'm sharing one of my personal crown jewel cards that I have been desiring for a couple years. These pop up rarely and when they do it's for insane asking prices.  But I finally pulled the trigger and got a great deal on this. Very unique and one of his most highly sought after RC's as only 99 were ever made and /50 were in English back and /49 were in Japanese.  Just an absolute beautiful card, also pictured is my chrome refractor rc which is another favorite of mine.

The PC Rainbow Project

Once I started getting into the hobby again in full force about 4 years ago there were alot of things about collecting that changed. One of the biggest things I slowly but surely noticed collectors were doing was trying to obtain "rainbows" of their favorite players.  I soon realized the massive variations of base cards for every player in most sets these days. The amount of colors and varying degrees of rarity stamped with serial #'s became a very amusing and interesting thing to grasp that soon became a semi obsession to obtain. My favorite player of all time Ichiro was my mark and goal for my own rainbow. My favorite card by far is his 2012 topps chrome card. I think its an awesome action shot and I am a big fan of the design of that year as well as being his last official topps cards as he signed a deal with Leaf and therefore also being the last year him with official mlb gear thats not airbrushed out. I came to the realization attempting to obtain every single variation from the 2012 topps base,chrome,opening day,mini in addition to vault,plates& goldrush series is insanely impossible to obtain especially for a superstar player like Ichiro. I simply keep saved searches on ebay to notify if a supefractor,atomic or other extreme and moderate rarities pop up for sale. Until then I simply enjoy the collection I have and jump for joy everytime I grab another card for the collection. My most recent pick up to the rainbow was a Red Refractor #/25 with BGS grading on it. This is one of the coolest looking refractors in the bunch in my opinion.  I know I likely overpaid for such a card but definitely worth it for a PC card and add in the fact I've been tracking it down for over a year! On the shelf is my 2012 Topps Ichiro PC Rainbow collection including SSP's, SP's and Update Series PC Rainbow & on the wall some more 2012 Ichiro's in rows of color.