Floored

If someone had told me when I got back into card collecting around eight years ago, that at some future point I would be collecting multiple different memorabilia/relic sets, I probably would have scoffed in disbelief, as I really didn't think to highly of them at the time.

Fast forward eight years, and I find myself working on eight different relic sets, one of which is the Parquet Performers set from the 2004-05 edition of Skybox Premium.

I only found out about this set around two years ago, and was immediately enamored with the idea of owning cards that featured a bit of the original parquet floor from the old Boston Garden, which unfortunately was torn down in 1998. That Parquet floor was probably the most famous floor in the history of sports, and to my knowledge, no other floor has had as much winning occur on top of it, as that old parquet did.

These cards fell at 1:12 packs, or since boxes contained twelve packs, you were basically guaranteed one per box. Even though those odds are relatively low, these don't come up on the secondary market all that often, and when they do, they're often priced higher then something with those odds normally would be. I haven't read anything about why they seem to be so scarce, but I believe Fleer went belly up not too long after this set was released, so that may or may not have something to do with it. There were also signed variations, which were 1:144 packs, or one per case. Printing plates could also be had, but I have no idea how one would figure out the odds on something that is a 1/1.

With the addition of Dave I now have three of the fifteen, Danny Ainge and K.C. Jones being the other two. I also have the Robert Parish cyan printing plate as well.

Had I been collecting at the time of the set's release, I'm sure I would have had it finished a long time ago. As of now, I'm acquiring one about every six months or so. Because of their scarcity on the secondary market, it always feels like a major win when I am able to get one on the cheap, as was the case with Mr. Cowens, who I was able to acquire via COMC a few months back for just a little over $9.


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