Spotlight: 2005 Zenith

2005 was one of the years that I was not quite as active as usual in buying new cards.  Much of the reason for this is that I was in law school at the time and did not have a lot of time or money.  In addition the Red Sox had just come off of a long-awaited World Series victory so most cards were coming at a premium price.  I did collect in 2005, but I was focusing most of my attention on Jason Varitek cards.

One of the sets that did jump out at me in 2005 was Zenith.  It was a throwback to some of the Pinnacle brands in the mid 1990's.  The Museum Collection and Artist's Proof parallels were all very impressive with the dufex finish.  They made very attractive cards.  The parallels and inserts with the finish were definitely the big draws here.  As a Varitek collector at the time, I managed to pick up one of each of the parallels.

Of course many of the inserts also had the dufex finish.  Later on I went and grabbed some of those inserts as well.  I am always on the look out for some more of these cards.  So if anyone has any of the Museum Collection or Artist's Proof Red Sox parallels, I could definitely use some.  I have all three Varitek parallels as well as the Johnny Damon Museum Collection and Curt Schilling Artist's Proof.

The scan below shows the Red Hot insert of Ted Williams, Team Zenith card of Schilling, Z Team card of Damon, and Positions card of Manny Ramirez.

The team set was reasonable for a set from this time.  Boston had 12 cards in the set, including most of the big-name players from the World Championship team.  It also had a couple of Hall of Famers and a Rookie Prospect card of Hanley Ramirez.  All in all, it was a very nice set and one of my favorites from 2005.  It was not terribly heavy on game-used and autographs, instead its primary focus was on nice-looking parallels and inserts.  Certainly a rarity in that year.