1993 Topps Finest #118 Refractor

Card Review: 9.1  If your into price guides, this is probably the most valuable Wallach you'll find listed (a couple others aren't listed "due to scarcity").  20 years later these '93 Refractors still demand a premium.  Even I, a self professed hater of Topps Finest and the "premium" baseball card, can't deny that this is a pretty neat card.  The "refractor" element of it looks really cool.  The '94 and '95 Topps Finest refractors lacked this sort of shine.  Though the '03 and '05 refractors may be even more impressive than this one.  In any event, I only have one of this card and don't really anticipate having anymore in the near future.  Despite allegedly being extremely rare, I see this card show up for sale on a regular basis, but usually it's in the $50-$100 price range.  And for now, I'd much rather have the 500-1000 1987 Topps that that kind of money will buy than one of these.

Number of this card in my collection: 1

2014 update: n/a

2015 update: n/a

2016 update: n/a

2017 update: n/a

2018 update: n/a

2019 update: n/a

2020 update: n/a

2021 update: n/a

2022 update: n/a

2023 update: 2


BONUS POST

I've tempered my disdain for graded cards since their inception.  I can see their value as a safe guard against forgery when buying high dollar vintage cards online .  However, why anyone would pay to grade a card made in the last 30 years is beyond me.  This card came to me in a PSA case.  I only have a couple other cards that came in graded card cases, and I didn't bother to crack them.  But this Wallach needed to go into my binder where I keep one copy of all the different Wallach's.

So I took to youtube and watched a couple of instructional videos on how to open the case.  It looked very easy in the videos.  A couple of twist with a little screw driver and the case neatly popped into two pieces.  I didn't have that kind of luck, but I did free the card unscathed.