Snorting Bull Award: Best Parallel Set

The last two years I have dabbled in handing out awards on my blog.  Not much different then the Oscars or Emmys.  Just my opinion being stated with a few people telling me I am either awesome or an idiot because that's how awards roll.  This year I am stepping up my game a little bit more.  After looking back over the past two years one thing I have consistently missed is actually having a symbol to represent my award.  Neither the Emmys, nor the Oscars were holding a garage sale to unload extra statues, so I created my own electronic statue.  If you are the brand manager at a card company and you win one of these awards feel free to print out a copy of the picture below, remember it's a picture of a statue, and hang it on your cubicle wall.  Huge honor to win one of these.....

Snorting Bull Award: Best Parallel Set 

My awards are starting off with the no-brainers first.  In other words I have had my mind made up on these awards for weeks.  I also know that Bowman Draft has not been released yet, but I am willing to risk it because I doubt there is a parallel set this cool in that set.  I'd challenge someone to prove me wrong, but they will not do it.  

My parallel set of the year goes to the Acetate parallel in the Topps Series 1, Series 2, and Update sets.  As a collector, I had long ago tired of seeing all sorts of red and orange and pink and camo cards.  The acetate parallels were something completely different, and best of all, they were a challenge to add to your collection with a print run of just 10 cards.  My first copy of one of these cards landed in my collection back in February when I picked up a copy of the Kyle Lohse acetate out of Series 1.  Later that month I added this incredible looking Todd Helton card.......

This is Helton's last Topps base card as an active player, so I thought it would be a cool one to own.  The scan does not really do the card justice, but it has a smooth translucent finish and is serial numbered in small silver print on the bottom left corner just above the team logo.  For appearance sake, it very much looks like Helton's actual 2014 card, but the changes made to the front of the acetate parallels is very subtle.  The backs of the cards are really cool and make this a dynamic parallel set.  

The look like a reversed photo, which is an Upper Deck thing, but for these cards they work out really nicely with the translucent finish.  I love the contrast Topps provides from the picture with the black finish along the edges of the back and the black and white finish on the player photo against the colored background.  

Overall, this was an easy selection as the parallel set of the year.  As a collector I would personally love to see Topps scrap about half of their parallels and stick to design ideas like this which truly push their products as innovative and are a challenge for collectors to track down due to the fact that there are a very finite amount.  Parallels lose some of their luster when there are two dozen of them, half of which are numbered to /500 or /250 or come one per jumbo pack.  

My absolutely most favorite copy of an acetate card I picked up this year belongs to Cardinals outfielder Jon Jay.  Here is the original post and here is a picture for this post......

Tops always seems to get awesome photographs of Jon Jay.  Last year they had him crashing into a wall next to Tony LaRussa, this year they have this gem with Matt Holliday.  Really awesome card and great design by the folks at Topps.