Barney Update Sapphire And A Completed Rainbow

Topps update came out last week and I'm waiting patiently for Brentandbecca to sort through his 60 cases. He should be shipping my complete and Cubs team sets within the next couple days.

While I'm waiting, I was able to get the one card from Update that I was really looking forward to....

...the Darwin Barney Sapphire card. To goose sales, or to make life difficult on us player collectors, Topps added another parallel to the Update set, the Sapphire cards. And the cards are not for just the 330 cards in the Update set, but for previous 660 in Series One and Two. And then to make it even more difficult, they limited these to only 25 copies of each.

I had asked Brent to add the Barney Sapphire to my order, but with the limited run of them, he couldn't promise me that he'd pull one, even though he's got 60 cases. Luckily for me, one popped on Ebay on Wednesday and the seller listed is as a Buy It Now/Best Offer. I made an offer and it was accepted almost immediately. By Saturday I had the card.

I was really looking forward to getting this card because it would be the 21st and final card in my 2013 Topps Barney rainbow. Other than a couple 1/1 and /5 cards, I believe I've got all of the different variations.

With 21 cards, this is the biggest rainbow I've ever put together. The good news it that the number of cards is less than the number of errors Barney committed (a Starlin Castro collector couldn't say the same thing). Unfortunately, it seems like 21 is about the number of hits Darwin had during the 2013 season.

OK, he had more than that (he had 104), but his batting average dropped to just .208. I'm afraid that if he doesn't show major improvement next season, my days as a Barney collector are numbered.

My 21 variations are:

• Topps Base set
• Factory Team set
• Opening Day
• Sapphire
• Silver Slate Blue
• Opening Day Blue
• Emerald
• Black
• Silver Slate
• Blue
• Red
• Purple
• Camo
• Gold
• Pink
• Orange
• Opening Day Purple
• Printing Plate Yellow
• Mini
• Mini Pink
• Mini Gold

And here are the cards: