To Peel, Or Not To Peel? That Is The Question. A "Rare" 90's Card For My Ed Belfour Collection:

Ed Belfour 1997-98 Pinnacle Totally Certified Platinum Red Parallel #/4299

​To Peel, or not to peel? That is the question. 

Shakespearian quotes aside, today I acheived a nostalgic milestone for my Eddie Belfour collection: To collect at least 1 card from each of the NHL teams he played for. 

While not a milestone to write home about (hence the existance of this blog post), I always wanted to add this card to my Belfour collection  since I was a kid, mainly for 2 reasons:

1) Ed Belfour was the man back in the day
2) 90's parallels have no equal and are a sight to behold for any cardboard fan

Back in the 1990's, the initial boom of card collecting produced a number of fresh ideas that flooded the hobby landscape at the time. Towards the end of the decade, shiny parallels were all the rage and Pinnacle stepped up to the plate in a big way. If you could only remember 1 parallel from this time period, chances are they would be near the top of your list. 

From the staple "Peel Off" surface wrap, to the various coloured glows, these parallels have been some of my favourites for some time. Although I haven't owned one before, I knew of their existance from seeing 90's collectors (mainly baseball player collectors) show-off their collections and these Totally Certified paralleled cards were all the rage. For the lower-numbered parallels, they can still fetch big money in today's market. 

I decided to go with the somewhat "rare" Platinum Red parallel, numbered #/4299. A limited card with over 4 thousand copies might seem comical by today's standards, but the overall print runs in the 1990's were a lot higher and serial numbering cards like this did serve a purpose in order to create a decending staircase of rarity - A relativitly new concept at the time.

While not the rarest card in the world, this Sharks card of "The Eagle" will forever remind me of all of the goodness that the 1990's had to offer. 

Happy Collecting, 

- Aaron / Creasecollector