Ryan Barone (@ballcardgenius, Card Expert) is a lifelong member of the hobby. He has been quoted in PSA Magazine, and his content has regularly been mentioned in “Quick Rips” (the Topps RIPPED Newsletter) and across other hobby publications. hello@ballcardgenius.com; Last Time Ago LLC dba Ballcard Genius.
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I don’t care who you are, we are all suckers for shine. That glimmer under the water could be buried treasure. And I’m pretty sure I’ve tried my best to catch a glimpse of the end of the rainbow for that waiting pot of gold.
So, it’s no surprise why we are drawn to the shiny in cardboard. Especially if you were someone who grew up only around vintage cards and most of the junk wax era, shiny cards weren’t nearly as commonplace as they are today. Thus, seeing one in a stack of any modern baseball cards it’s cause for double take.
Unfortunately, they aren’t all worth as much as you’d expect for their beauty, but some are, and so it’s important to know what to look for.
Here are four different types of shiny baseball cards—holograms, foil cards, chrome cards, and refractors.
1. Holograms
Perhaps the oldest of the bunch, the holographic baseball card or “hologram” was the first shiny baseball card to burst on to the scene. Denny’s “Grand Slam” hologram cards made them popular, and the addition of hologram cards in early Upper Deck releases solidified their place in the hobby.
You know the type, right? The card might not look like anything but a silver mirror until you tilt it in one direction, revealing a moving “3D” picture within.
If you collected baseball cards during the Junk Wax era, odds are these Upper Deck inserts gave you a scary glimpse into your future, AKA growing old
— Mario Alejandro (@BeisbolCardBlog) May 18, 2023
Released 30 years ago, 'Then & Now' is an 18-card hologram set featuring veteran stars in their rookie year, as well as what… pic.twitter.com/nMNlVAveMT
Heroes of Baseball, Then & Now, Diamond Gallery, Looney Toons “Comic Ball” holograms, and more. My favorite? 1994 SP Holoview FX. Coupled with the die cut, these cards had every new innovation rolled into one baseball card.
2. Foil Cards
Right around the same time that holograms were carving out their place in the hobby, cards with shiny foil finishes and touches were becoming more and more popular as well. (In fact, some people use foil card and holographic interchangeably, but you’ll see they really are much different from one another.)
When you talk foil and baseball cards, there are two different classes to consider. One was the foil card, as was the case with 1993 SP rookies (some of the coolest baseball cards in the history of cardboard). In this case the whole card or the vast majority of it has a shiny foil finish.
1993 SP Foil Jeter BGS 8.5 $400 shipped pic.twitter.com/CUxXyhnXge
— Jeff (@jtteaxasaggie) April 11, 2023
The other class was the card with foil finishes and accents, such as the 1992 Topps Gold cards, which featured the typical baseball card look and feel, but with a gold foil stamped name and team name.
Today, foil cards are an official mainstay in many of the biggest releases. Non-Chrome products like Topps Big League, Archives, and flagship routinely feature differently colored foil cards to brighten up their releases.
So, again, how do you know if you have a foil? For one, it won’t be a chromium finish like Topps Chrome or Finest. Two, if these are special foil parallels, they are usually numbered cards in Topps flagship releases.
LIKE, FOLLOW + RETWEET to WIN this Shohei Ohtani 2023 Topps Rainbow Foil Refractor ??⚾ ?#Giveaway #Freebie #Giveaways #Free #GiveawayAlert #baseballcards #CarolinaCardCo #ShoheiOhtani pic.twitter.com/PuxNy8PZAj
— Carolina Card Co (@CarolinaCardCo) July 10, 2023
Other sets like Stadium Club offer “red foils” and “black foils” but these are pretty subtle. Rainbow foil are perhaps the most obvious, non-numbered foil card out there.
3. Chrome (Non-Refractor)
As you go through this list, you’ll see there are varying degrees of shine. Holograms are pure shine, but it’s own unique type, and not really “hit you over the head” shine.
Foil cards are about as shiny as you can get without a chromium finish.
Chrome cards are shiny by nature, meaning you can’t really have a Chrome card without any type of shine, yet, when placed next to a refractor (coming up next) can appear relatively dull!
$25 Ozzie Albies 2018 Topps chrome Update RC PSA 10 Atlanta Braves #mbb 6907: Follow and reply with #mbb to claim and purchase! @midwestboxbreak pic.twitter.com/TidMoXZCMj
— Red_Hills_Collectibles (@ty_slocumb) August 12, 2023
Read More: Topps Chrome Breaker’s Delight
Honestly, if you had to rank them, non-refractor cards with a chromium finish would probably rank toward the bottom of the list, but don’t forget you can’t have refractors without being a chrome card….
4. Refractors (and Silver Prizms)
Ah yes, the cream of the crop—refractors (and silver prizms). That is, refractors if you’re a baseball card collector and thus heavily into Topps and prizms if you’re more of a basketball and football collector and thus Panini chaser (well, that is up until the recent NFLPA and Panini news).
If you aren’t familiar, if you’ve ever seen your card look more like a rainbow than anything, that’s a refractor. In dull light it might be tough to tell a refractor apart from base chrome, but in even a sliver of light you can quickly tell the difference between the two.
2000 Topps Chrome Own The Game refractor PSA 10. Bright shiny and beautiful just like it should be. pic.twitter.com/jGSOx1EKnb
— Griffey Collector (@thekid24cards) June 7, 2023
Now, there are a handful of different types of refractors, so I’m using this as an umbrella term here—xfractors, tacofractors, atomic refractors, prism refractors, and more.
So there you have it—did I miss anything?
