The reason all these sub brand offshoots make me so very happy

 Sometimes it turns out all these different brands that Topps, et al. are pushing turns out to be a blessing.  I wanted to add this Kyle Isbel to the Action Parallel (AKA Floating Balls in Sparkles) Frankenset.  It's got the Bat and the Ball floating, which so nicely ties the two themes up.  

I was all ready to pull the trigger on this, all but sure that there is no card at #220 that I couldn't replace with this one.  

Until I got to slot #220 and found it was the Randy Johnson  All Black.  

His last card, in which he is doing god knows what kind of dance move on a plain black feild with the ball floating away as if he was trapped in the great void of interstellar space.  So that is a no go.  I thought about adding Isbel as a back slide parallel.  Sort of a parallel to the original Parallel card that I often do to avoid a Sophies Choice.  At some point I may have 2 full Frankensets in every binder because of the front and back thing.  But Isbel deserves to be front and center and it would be disrespectful to the very card to give it also ran Status.  

But in looking at the cards he had I came to understand that the same image was issued in the Chrome Set with a DIFFERENT number.  

Now we're cooking with gas.  

I'm not a huge fan of the Chrome series.  I generally avoid the base cards which look flat and lifeless despite their shininess.  The Refractors are better, but they still have the outline on the ball and bat and such that takes away a bit from the image, but hey, this refractor is purple, so it's an even better parallel than a plain refractor.  I do somewhat prefer the flat cardboard parallels.  So, I did more research. Turns out there is yet another number on this image from the 2021 Topps UK edition.  #178 to be exact in black, blue, gold, purple and union jack!! borders and each SNd.  

So far, no luck on replacing it with a UK card, but if you have any of the UK #178 parallels, I'm inclined to give up a lot for it.  Don't care which one.  I probably could go buy the one on ebay for $5, but trading is so much more fun.  So, make me an offer.  

New Partially authentic Nolan Ryan + Thurman Munson RCs

 A seller on Ebay goes by RedBirdOctober and actually has some good vintage many of you might dig but doesn't meet my, uh,  "standards".  He did have a couple things that I acquired and will talk about later when they arrive, but he also showed me some really great things that he has come across.  

A 1970 Munson duo RC on a '67

Nolan Ryans 1969 RC reimagined on some scrubs 1968

I suppose this kid was mad that their RCs were duo headshot cards that Topps cheaped out on and wanted to remake cool action poses with these, which almost kinda works somehow.  We all know how much their actual RC go, but I have no idea what these new and improved versions would fetch.  I would love to send them in to be graded and slabbed.  If they were sold on eBay at Market value you'd have to send them to eBay for "authentication" which I imagine would cause the grader to stroke out. 

And I have no idea what is going on with scribbling Elliot Maddux name over Richie Allen in 1967

Luckily, he was not looking to sell them at this time.  And I'm not suggesting you all start a petition demanding that he sell them to me.  I personally would never stoop to ask for cards from a personal collection, and I hope that you would not pressure this nice man by starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to make it impossible not to sell these cards.  That is totally not what I am about.  I don't engage in such pettiness because I'm too busy considering such conundrums as does Munson get filed into slot #189 or #48? Does Nolan Ryan go into slot #231? What did this kid have against Elliot Maddux to rename his Richie Allen card? And why did all the cards suddenly start calling him Dick on his cards mid-career.