Redemption Blues

It's a commonly held feeling amongst card collectors that redemption cards really stink.  I have always held the philosophy that redemption cards are not good cards and therefore should be sold or traded as quickly as possibly.  For years this worked beautifully and kept me away from making posts about sitting and waiting for a card, or yelling and screaming about how the redemption went unfilled and the card company substituted several undesirable cards in place of the card I should have received.

This year I actually redeem my redemption cards.  Huge mistake.  They seemed like they would be cool cards to own at the time and it's not like they were top dollar cards either.  The first redemption I pulled this year was an autographed Postseason Relic from Anibel Sanchez.

This should be a cool card, right?  Almost a year after redeeming this card it is still sitting on the redemption dashboard on the Topps website as "Pending".  Will this card ever show up?  I am anticipating a package from Topps filled with a nice apology letter and an autograph of Mike Leake.  There is better hope for my other redemption card which came out of my Topps Update box.

Again, a cool card, but not a top dollar card.  Teheran seems like a goos signer too, so I hold out hope that this card might one day find its way into my mailbox.  After pulling these two cards I have decided that any 2015 redemption cards I pull will be traded or sold.  I am not sure what I was thinking this year, but it probably has not worked out for the best.  To illustrate how poorly the redemption system at Topps works, I actually ended up with a third redemption card this year that I did not post.

I picked this redemption card up from a frequent trade partner on Facebook knowing that the cards had been signed and were already out on the market.  That was sometime early in December.  Almost a month and a half later we have.......

A nice card of Rays second baseman Nick Franklin.  The fact that there have been several of these on Ebay for the last couple of months, but it took weeks to fill a redemption speaks to the fact that the problem with redemption cards goes beyond the fact that players sometimes simply do not honor their promises to sign and return cards.  Processing cards that are clearly in stock and signed should not take weeks and just adds to the frustration of collectors who are already trying to wait patiently for their cards.  Redemption cards, no thank you.