I couldn't leave well enough alone

 

Well, I didn't listen to my OCD and went ahead and finally acquired the 2023 Allen & Ginter Clayton Kershaw mini.

Until the 2023 arrival, I could display a complete page of A&G Kershaw minis from the start of his career. It looks like this:

Ain't that pretty? That's very nice. (It also illustrates how less-interesting Kershaw's cards have gotten over the years).

I could have stopped right there. That's most of his career, really. It's all the most valuable minis, too. One page to sum it all up.

But I've never really been a less-is-more collector.

So ...

There's this situation.

A new Kershaw mini, a new page, a card all alone by itself and my OCD running around the room screaming with sirens going off.

I couldn't leave well enough alone. All in the pursuit of more, more, more.

But I had to do it. Kershaw still pitched in 2023. He's supposed to pitch in 2024. I need cards to represent those years. Hell, I just need all the Kershaw cards. It shouldn't be constricted by how a page is aligned.

The problem is, Kershaw is not going to last for 14 more seasons. There won't be 14 more A&G minis, even if Topps pulls some sort of Derek Jeter thing where he keeps appearing in sets long after retirement, I'm guessing Kershaw won't keep showing up every year.

So that could be an issue, but I quickly came up with a solution.

This is where parallels come in handy, and I sure did go crazy over the parallels earlier in his career.

 

Not so much more recently, as you can see. But all the parallels do carry the Kershaw minis into more than half of a second page and creates enough room for probably just enough to finish out his career, if my current collecting pace holds true.

However, if I suddenly get obsessed with more Kershaw mini parallels, I could be in trouble.

(P.S.: I am not much of a player collector so all of these cards are actually sorted by year and then team, not by individual player. However, if I ever want to make a few bucks, guess how I will sort these?)