A Lankford Plate! A Lankford Plate!

I have been waiting for this day for a few years.  Back in 2002 I saw three Ray Lankford printing plates in one Ebay auction and lost them at the last minute.  Two of the three were Padres cards, but I just wanted to own one Ray Lankford printing plate.  Really, this is the way printing plates should work.  Back in the day printing plates were tough pulls.  There were not cyan and magenta and black plates.  Just plain printing plates.  Take a stroll around Ebay and you can find several printing plates from the late 90s for sale, or that have sold, but they are more true 1/1 cards than the printing plates put out by card companies today. 

I literally have hundreds of really good Ray Lankford cards.  Short prints, photo proofs from the pictures on the cards, autographs, relics, a game used bat, etc.  No plate, until today....

This plate comes from the 1997 New Pinnacle set.  That set was one of many run of the mill Pinnacle sets from the era which ultimately led to the demise of the company.  If you are looking at the card and thinking that something looks strange, well....This card is actually the plate for the back of the card.  While printing plates in most products today come with a front picture in several colors, the older plates came in one color with a front and back.  The cool thing about this card is the fact that it has a little COA on the back of the card....

 

Pretty sweet card, even if it's the back.  I picked this card up in a trade on Twitter this past week, but also had a few other cards coming back my way in exchange for a nice Shelby Miller Futures Game relic and autograph.  Here are my other cards:

 1999 Upper Deck Ultimate Victory Foil

 

I also did not have this Lankford card.  The Upper Deck Victory set was a kid friendly, $1 a pack, set from the late 90s.  In 1999 Upper Deck tried to spruce the set up a pinch by issuing the Ultimate Victory version of the cards.  Think Topps and Topps Chrome.  The set was driven for awhile by a cool Rick Ankiel rookie card, but after Ankiel's pitching career faded the set died down in popularity and price.  The Foil versions of the Ultimate Victory set are pretty sharp.  Happy with this addition. 

 

I also picked up a lot of 11 mini cards from the 2014 Topps 1989 Die Cut minis set.  Working on putting this set together slowly, so this lot will help plug a bunch of the holes.  Overall, a great trade and a few awesome additions to the collection.