Jimmy Howard: Champ's Silver & Gold

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm still trying to catch up on all the maildays I've had in recent months. It doesn't help that I have my cards scattered in different places and they're never close to my scanner, so sometimes it takes a while to even get to them.

Today's post is all about Upper Deck Champ's, specifically the 2015-16 version. I have always liked the look of this set and Howard's base card is one of my favorite base designs of his. In addition to the base, which I picked up several years ago, there were some parallels out there too: Silver (numbered to 25), Gold and Gold Back.

Here is the Silver version I got from eBay.

This thing looks awesome, it is definitely near the top of my list of favorite Howard cards now. An added bonus is that it features Howard's amazing lion themed mask. If I had to choose one as my favorite of his, that would be it. Here is a link to an InGoal Magazine article about the mask. Seeing the closeups makes me like it even more.

Now here is the Gold version that also came from eBay. The only difference between this and the silver is the coloring around the edges and the design inside the border.

These go very nicely with the base version that I already had. While there is still the gold back version out there, you could almost consider these three to be a complete rainbow I guess because the two golds appear to be the same on the fronts. However, the perfectionist in me says I need to have all four for it to truly be complete. I haven't seen one yet, so who knows when I'll be able to get one.