The New Favorite: 2013 Topps Museum Collection Mets Pitcher Jersey Piece Goodness.

       I have severely cut down on my purchases of fancy modern game-used cards in recent years.  I've done this for a few reasons: cost, the veracity of the pieces, and simple overkill.  What was very new and neat in 1999 is not so much in 2013. There is only so many times you can see a swatch of bat or jersey and lose your shit before the emotion just isn't there anymore.  The manufactured scarcity of low serial numbers should be factored in to the equation.  But every once in a while I stumble upon a card and I must MUST make it mine...

Oddly enough, this is not that card.  The original one I saw was all patch pieces and numbered much lower.  When the bidding went into the triple digits for that one, I gracefully and sanely bowed out.  But when I searched eBay for similar cards, I stumbled across this one.  Granted, it is not all colorful patch pieces and the serial is higher, but damn, ain't she a beauty?  It nicely covers the past, present, and future of New York Mets pitching.  I mean, yeah, the perfect choices for that card would be Zack Wheeler, Matt Harvey, Dwight Gooden, and Tom Seaver - but you can't have everything.  Sometimes, you have to roll with the Topps punches and they did a nice job of selection in spite of themselves.  Seaver is a must, Johan pitched the Mets' first no-hitter, Dickey won the Cy Young award last year, and Matt Harvey is the heir apparent to all the rich heritage Mets pitching history has to offer. And while it is all one-color jersey pieces, they did go out of their way to get different textures and colors of the four different pieces.  In the end, quite a nifty card. 

A couple of quibbles with the back...Topps numbering system continues to baffle.  PPFQR?  Why not just go with L.H.O.O.Q.? I also find it troubling that their disclaimer is now bigger than anything else printed on the back and is so vague and far-reaching it may as well say "The fuzzy pieces on the front of this card are figments of your imagination."