Redeemed Treasures

Back before the season started I was adding Gregory Polanco cards as much as humanly possible. After he struggled at the end of the 2014 season the market cooled and prices were affordable. Two cards I added around the same time were redemptions from the National Treasures set.

I'm well aware of the horror stories with redemptions, but at least in my experience I've only had issues with Topps. Panini on the other hand has been smooth sailing. In the past year I've probably logged 7 redemptions onto the Panini website and have gotten all of them back within a couple a months, including one that was expired. Topps pretty much laughs at you when you have an expired redemption.

So when I cherry picked a couple of high end Polanco redemptions I figured it was highly likely that they would be filled. He had been an active signer for just about every major release and some of his autos were pack ready at the time of National Treasures release. Seemed like a pretty safe play.

2014 Notable Nicknames Gregory Polanco /99

Rookie Colossal Gregory Polanco Jersey Auto /99

While a little more time passed (3 months) than I would have liked, I finally received both of these on the same day last week. The Notable Nicknames set is extremely popular on the secondary market. In some ways I'm glad these were redemptions as it made the price much more manageable. Three Pirates were featured in the set as Poloanco along with Gerrit Cole and Dave Parker made appearances. I've probably tried 10 times to buy the Cole but it goes for $40+ every time. I'm a sucker for nickname cards. The Pirates just had so many cool ones like Mad Dog, Cobra and Candy Man. 

The funny thing is Polanco never really knew why one of his minor league coaches started calling him "Coffee", but it stuck. 

The second auto was more of an impulse buy, but the price was right and I can never say no to adding a nice on card auto. As the serial numbers get lower the jersey pieces become nicer. A couple months back I saw one that pretty much had the entire Pirate logo. Some people are still posting the redemption cards rather than logging them, so I may still have an outside chance to chase some of the lower numbered versions. Either way I'm pretty content with these. 

Thanks for reading!