1998 Topps Stars & Steel Gold Ray Lankford

1998 Topps Stars & Steel Rafractor Ray Lankford 

I am having great luck this month finding new Ray Lankford cards for my collection.  I am usually doing really well if I can find one new Lankford card to add each month, but I am already at two for this month.  This card comes from the 1998 Stars & Steel set which was the Topps entry into the 90s metal card craze.  There were several other sets that featured metal cards during this time period.  Two of my favorites were the Leaf Preferred cards which had a metal inset set and Pinnacle Metal Works which were redemptions in the Pinnacle Xpress set and were the heaviest baseball cards ever.

The Topps Stars & Steel set ran for two years, 1998 and 1999, and were pretty high end for the late nineties.  Boxes only came with 12 packs with 3 cards per pack with no inserts, only parallels.  Since the set was 44 cards it basically took at least two boxes to assemble the complete set.  At the time the set was released I was surprised that Lankford made the checklist, but quickly added his base card from this set to my collection.  I have seen the Gold parallel several times, but have never found a price I was comfortable paying until this month.  I am still missing the Holographic Gold card, which combined the gold parallel along with the refractor concept.  They tend to be pricy, but I am always on the lookout.