You can buy a lot of things with $38,000 –a pretty luxurious vehicle, a decent boat, a motorcycle or in some parts of this country, a home. You can also buy exactly one case of 2018 Topps Transcendent Baseball Cards.
These are without a doubt the highest-end cards Topps produces or has ever produced. Only 83 of these cases were made, and each comes with an invitation to meet one of baseball's best - Mike Trout! Though I'm sure Mr. Trout is a nice fella, there was only one thing about Transcendent that piqued my interest –a 1/1 Gary Carter Jumbo Relic Cut Auto Card! Like the rest of the set, the card is an homage to 1983 (hence 83 cases), which is one of my favorite Topps Flagship designs. As soon as I saw the checklist, I just knew I had to have it!
Well on December 18th, 2018 (8s!), just 4 days after the release, the booklet was pulled by a breaker named Houdini in case #45/83. A fine gentleman in the break knew I was a Carter Super Collector and was looking for the card, and contacted me within minutes of it being broken. I quickly found the stream and fast forwarded right to the Carter being unearthed. Houdini even mentioned having seen my posts looking for the card. Since the booklet came in a sealed plastic holder, the inside design was a mystery. Suddenly I began dreaming of opening this card for the first time on Christmas morning. To me, from ME!
I reached out to the lucky new owner, but he had a number in his head I knew I just couldn't meet. I came up a little higher, but he wouldn't budge. He said he was going to wait until he got the card in hand to decide what he was going to do, and because he was all the way up in Alaska, the card took a while to reach him. My vision of opening this card under the Christmas tree vanished, but as luck would have it, on December 28th (8s!), he received the card and reached out with an offer that we were both happy with. The booklet was leaving the Last Frontier and heading to somewhat warmer Connecticut. I didn't dare ask if he opened it and took a peek.
On January 2, 2019, the booklet arrived at my Post Office. The previous owner couldn't help himself and did take a look at it before sending it along. I took a video of myself opening with the intention of adding to this post, but it's not very good. Guess I'll need some more practice if I ever want to try my hand at being a case breaker. Anyway, without further adieu, here is the 2018 Topps Transcendent 1/1 Jumbo Relic Cut Auto Booklet of the great Gary Carter.
While I was hoping for an auto on a plain piece of paper (as opposed to a check), I'm very, very pleased with the look of this booklet overall. It's a great head shot of Gary and the use of the 1983 design in a booklet is pretty darn cool. So...I think I'll keep it.