Completion! - 1993 Topps Gold

While there are likely several larger parallel sets out there, this is probably the biggest one I'll ever build.  Many of the cards therein are the same ones I pulled from packs as a young man making the transition from junior high to high school.  It was a build 30 years in the making, one resumed in earnest just a few years ago, and now it's over.

The final card?

#444 David Nied

Why is he performing his wind-up with a dark expanse ("Blacker than midnight on a moonless night.") lurking behind him?  How did the Rockies know to track Nied to his Enclave of Obscurity in order to make him their first pick in the 1992 Expansion Draft?  What sort of dark arts did he practice, and why did he fail to use them to enhance his pitching prowess?  So many unanswered questions here.

As the final card to go into the binder, Nied has some auspicious company on the completed page.  With Murphy, Caminiti, and Strawberry, Nied struggles to make it into the top half of players on his page, much less earning the honor of the page's captain.

It's a pair of binders that looks really good on the shelf.  I will show this off to any head of state whose car happens to break down in front of my house and asks to use the phone.  

 *Special thanks to Chris Harris, who generously provided a few hundred cards for this endeavor.