Seattle Native Finishes 2018 Topps Baseball Update Series Gold Parallel Set
When 2018 Topps Baseball Update Series was released, Chris Torres was ready to rip.
That was a great product featuring rookie cards of future stars Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, and Ronald Acuña Jr.
“I was a case breaker, but not in modern terms,” said Torres, who is a Seattle native. “Back then, I was buying 10 to 15 cases of product and I was reselling all the contents of the case. That’s what you would consider a case breaker back in 2017, 2018.”
On Black Friday of 2018, a major card seller had cases going for $499. Torres went wild.
After filing through all the packs he’d opened, Torres realized there were a high number of gold parallel cards. Each player in the base set had a gold parallel numbered to 2018.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have so many of these gold parallels and I have all of the cards,’” Torres said. “I don’t remember if I had to trade or buy a couple on the secondary market. But just through opening about 15 cases of this product, I just kind of put the set together because I had pulled so many of the gold parallels. The set just kind of came out of happenstance.”
Torres completed the 300-card gold parallel set that includes three Ohtani cards by himself, three more with other players, as well as single cards of Soto and Acuña Jr.
Torres likes the look of the set with the gold background and rays going off both the left and right edges of each card.
“My target back then was to always open the case and sell the cards. I was never really keeping stuff for the long term,” Torres said. “But having that set is cool, because there can only be 2,018 sets of that, because they’re all numbered out of 2018. People were selling singles, so I knew at the time there probably is only going to be maybe 10 sets at the most put together. There can’t be that many.”
Torres has heard that there are about five collectors who have also completed the gold parallel set. The fact that it’s a rare set with rookie cards of three of the top current-day MLB players makes it extremely desirable for collectors.
Turning to T206
While at the National Sports Collectors Convention in 2019, Torres picked up his first 1909-11 T206 card, a Frank Chance yellow portrait.
That purchase set in motion an addiction for Torres to the century-plus-old tobacco cards. Torres’ first goal was to go after the Polar Bear brand set, which is comprised of 250 cards.
It took Torres two years to complete the Polar Bear set, wrapping it up in December 2023. That spawned Torres’ next hobby project. The complete T206 set consists of 524. However, because of the scarcity and high prices for the Big 4—Honus Wagner, Eddie Plank, Joe Doyle, and Sherry Magee—the 520-card set is considered the “everyday man set,” noted Torres.
“I was getting a little bored of just upgrading Polar Bears and realized two of the hardest cards to come by in the 520 are (Ray) Demmitt and (Bill) O’Hara for Polar Bear, I already have those in that set. They are what you would consider card number five and card number six passed the Big 4,” Torres said. “A lot of collectors who go after the 520 only pick up the 518 because they don’t want to spend the money on Demmitt and O’Hara. They’re two common players. They cost me a combined $7,000. They were more expensive than my Cobb red.”
Torres really enjoys collecting 115-year-old pieces of Americana.
“There are so many stories of these players that I love to research and learn about,” Torres said. “When I bought, for example, Del Howard’s T206 card two or three years ago, looking at his story and realizing he’s buried here in Seattle. We think of all these players being East Coast players, which a majority of them were, but some came from California. Del Howard is buried here in Seattle, so taking his card to his gravesite was a neat experience. So, learning all of these stories that we wouldn’t know if they didn’t have a T206 card is why I like T206s.”
Torres displays his favorite T206 on shelves behind a desk in his home office. He also displays them on his body. Yes, Torres is tattooed with those early 20th-century cardboard images. Torres’ left arm reflects his T206 journey to complete the Polar Bear set. On his right arm, Torres has inked cigarette packages the cards came in along with the T206 card of his favorite Southern League player, Dolly Stark.
As of early January, Torres has knocked out 283 of the 520 cards needed to complete the master T206 set.
“Right now, if I do a card a week for the next four and a half years, I’ll complete the set. I don’t know if it will take me that long, but that’s kind of goal right now.”
