Way back in 2010, I was introduced to online card forums for the first time. These forums allowed me to interact with other like-minded collectors and have access to a larger network of card collectors to trade and deal cards with, which as a teenager in high school, was truly an amazing thing. I’m not sure about you, but not many of my friends were into collecting like I was at that stage of life.
On these card forums is how I first discovered that the idea of player collecting could take on many different forms. While we all probably have handfuls of various base/insert cards players we’ve never thought twice about, or players we’ve picked up a select key cards of, the thought of being a “completionist” player collector was completely foreign to me at the time.
The idea being a completionist player collector involved collecting at least 1 copy of every single unique card of a certain player. While in the modern card landscape, this is impossible due to the numerous 1/1 cards out there, having 100% completion of a certain players card (minus 1/1’s), was still something many collectors simply will never be able to accomplish. But still, seeing how far you can get is all part of the fun!
This fun thought exercise would inspire me to start another player collection of a goalie that year by the name of Jhonas Enroth. If you’ve been a fan of this blog for any length of time, you can guess how that has turned out, as it has also brought me a lot of fun in this hobby for many years as well.
Around this time, I was also beginning my 2010-11 hockey season, which would be my final minor hockey season before aging out. Over the course of that season, myself and the other goalie on my team was lucky enough to receive personal 1-on1 goalie coaching. My goalie coach that year happened to be former Pro, Mike Mole.
Lots of cool memories come back to me when looking at that photo. I learned a lot over the course of that season and had a lot of fun training every week. Thanks again, Mike!
On that card collecting side of things, I managed to find out from him that he had a few cards of himself after being called up by the New York Islanders in 2008 for a few games. I decided to start my first purposeful player collection by trying to find at least 1 copy of every card he had, parallels and all (minus the 1/1’s). After looking up various product checklists and researching many different card sets, Mole’s card count came in at just 34 unique cards. The hunt was on!
After 14+ years of searching for this 17-year-old card, I was down to only needing this one final card for 100% completion on this 34/34 card quest: The elusive 2008-09 Upper Deck Artifacts Gold Spectrum parallel, numbered to just 5 copies. It’s been the final card on the want list for a few years now.
In all my years of searching, I had never seen one come up for sale before, and I had never heard of any team or set collector seeing one before, either. The passing of many years makes you start to question if you’ll ever find it….. Until you do.
After an eBay notification popped up in my email, I was alerted to this card popping up for sale. Once I verified what I was looking at, I couldn’t hit the Buy It Now button fast enough. A few weeks later, and it was finally in-hand!
In addition to this Artifacts Gold Spectrum /5 being the final non-1/1 card I’ve been wanted to cross of my want list for over a decade, it also completed this impressive Artifacts Rookie rainbow with a wide variety of coloured parallels. I still can’t get over how nicely these Artifacts Rookie cards were designed that year. Hats off to Upper Deck!
Check out the completed 8-card rainbow below. These cards look great side-by-side!
Copper /999
Silver /100
Gold /75
Blue /50
Copper Spectrum /25
Silver Spectrum /10
Gold Spectrum /5
Black 1/1
In the process of finding all of these rookie cards, I was also lucky enough to snag a black printing plate from this Artifacts set many years ago, too.
These printing plates were released inside boxes of 2008-09 Upper Deck The Cup. I’m still looking for the other 3!
Upper Deck 2008-09 The Cup Rookie Masterpieces: Artifacts Rookie Black Printing Plate 1/1
If you want to see the entire collection, you can click
HERE to head on over to that section on this website. While I’ll keep trying to locate any 1/1 cards I’m still missing to round out this player collection, it’s a nice feeling putting this little side collection to bed after all this time. What a fun hobby this is!
Happy Collecting,
Aaron
CREASECOLLECTOR 
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