2006-07 BLACK DIAMOND HOCKEY #J-RM
RYAN MILLER
Approximate value: $10
The uprising of the Buffalo Sabres in 2005-06 was reflected in card collecting. It also helped spur me into buying new cards at that time, something I had no intention back then of doing.
I got back into collecting modestly, wanting to pick away at old sets and snag cool cards of some Hall of Famers. But then I cracked and started buying new hockey cards in 2006 like it was toilet paper in 2020.
The downside is that most of those cards are less valuable than toilet paper. You buy a $90 box hoping to hit big on the 2-3 premium cards hiding within. That would be one or two different-colored parallels -- in the case of this Black Diamond set, the original card only with a different background color and numbered to 100, 10 or 1 -- and a card with a piece from a player's game-worn jersey, which also could be had in those different parallel quantities.
I bought an ungodly amount of that product. Ridiculous. Somewhere in the dark corners of this house are rows of worthless 2006-07 Black Diamond. This is not, I repeat not how to best spend money, even within collecting.
I decided to build a "Ruby" parallel set of that product, so each card in the set -- including the 100 jersey issues -- that were limited to 100 produced of each card. For example, there are only 100 of these Ryan Miller cards that have the red background toward the bottom. (This one is 67/100. It's a little more valuable if it's 1/100, or the player's jersey number which in this case would be 30/100.)
Martin Biron is also in this jersey issue, as is Chris Drury. I hadn't picked up this set in many years before last weekend. I was glad to find that my "want list" was still taped to the inside of the binder. I need about 15 cards and an additional 10 jersey cards to complete it. A never-ending or even impossible quest? Perhaps.
Have any of these cards? Email me at schopp@wgr550.com, I'll keep my list handy just in case.
