Perhaps the biggest difference in card collecting today than from before the mid ’90s are the explosion in parallel cards. When you open a pack of ’86 fleer, you’re only looking for Jordan’s base rookie—not for any autos, inserts, or parallels.
A parallel card is an alternate version of a base card where the photography and design are the same (or very close), but there are differences in colors, finishes, or overlays. These cards carry a more limited print run and are sometimes serial numbered.
There can also be parallels of an insert card, which adds a premium to the card’s value.
What is a Parallel Card?
When you open a pack of cards, you’ll notice right off that most of the cards look relatively the same. They’ll have the same general design, the same background, and the same finish (glossy vs flat).
Parallels are rarer, and are very popular to collect! In some sets, the parallels are the cards to chase—such as getting “color” autos in Topps Chrome, or silver prizms in Prizm basketball or football.
Parallels in different brands are often called prizms (Prizm, Mosaic, Select), refractors (Topps), or holo (Optic) cards.
How Do You Identify a Parallel Card?
While parallels don’t come in every pack, you’ll be able to distinguish them because they look like the base cards, but with differences that are usually fairly obvious!
The most common parallels have a different color border (called “refractors” in Topps), such as Topps does here with Gunnar Henderson’s Topps Chrome rookie:
A base goes for about $2, where the pink refractor is selling for about $10.
However, you can get into the rare numbered refractors, such as this green wave numbered out of 99:
Get that sucker graded, and a PSA 10 would be an extremely sought after card!
In some card brands, especially Topps, they like to put “hits” upside-down in their packs. They’re not always inserts (sometimes you’ll get autos or photo variations this way), but it is another way to identify that you’ve got a decent, non-base card in your pack.
Other Ways to Identify Parallel Cards
In addition to having a different color, here are a few other ways to identify parallel cards:
- Different Finish – Some Topps sets will have paper cards with a flat finish, and then have randomly inserted chrome-finish parallels.
- Subtle Design Difference – This happens a lot in Mosaic. One of the most popular parallels in the hobby is Genesis, but their other parallels, such as yellow reactive, have different designs overlaid on the card.
- Die Cut – This is popular in Select’s cards. You’ll often see different colors along the border, but then the card will be have parts cut out. These are really cool cards, but they’re also becoming a bit too common.
- Different Color Tones – While the Gunnar examples above have different-colored borders, some cards will have the entire thing be a different color palette or tone. The most popular example of this are the Sepia or Negative refractors in Topps.
- Serial Number – Usually, you’ll first notice that you’ve got a parallel by the different color, and then see the serial number. However, on rare occasions, you can find a card that looks pretty much like the base version, but the manufacturer will stick a serial number on there. This happened to me with a Zion Williamson insert card. It looked just like the regular insert, but then was numbered /99 on the back…and I sold it for $60!
- Says “Prizm” on the Back – While some sets don’t label their parallels differently, sets like Mosaic, Prizm, and Select will have the word “Prizm” on the back of the card to help you identify it.
What Are the Most Popular Parallel Cards?
Of course, the 1/1s in each set will be the most valuable, but they’re not a realistic chase. Here are the most popular semi-common parallel cards in the hobby:
- Refractors from Topps – Most people collect Topps only for the autos and their refractor parallels…with their refractor rookie autos being the ultimate prize!
- Prizms from Panini Prizm – Silver prizm rookies are generally considered the flagship rookies for basketball and football. They carry the most value of the non-numbered parallels.
- Animal Prints from Panini Select – If you find zebra, tiger, or elephant parallels, you’ve got a card with some serious value on your hands. There is a black snakeskin as well, but that’s a 1/1 card.
- Genesis from Panini Mosaic – In sports cards groups, these are the cards from Mosaic that most people show off. They’re not crazy hard to find, they look really cool, and they sell really well! I sold an ungraded Immanuel Quickley Genesis rookie for over $100.
Parallels vs Inserts
Insert cards have completely different photography and design than the base cards. They usually say something on them like “Prismic Power” or “Kaboom!” and usually only have stars in the set. They also carry their own numbering system.
However, many inserts these days have their own parallels! For example, you could have a regular insert card, and then a colored or numbered version of that parallel as well.
Here’s an example:
The one on the left is the regular insert, while the one on the right is numbered out of /149 (and sells for about 15x the price of the regular).
Parallels vs Variations
Many people in the hobby get these two things confused. Back in the day, “variations” were usually some sort of mistake in printing, such as the famous Frank Thomas “no-name” variation.
However, now they are included on purpose, and are most common in Topps baseball sets. Usually, they’ll use the same design as the base card, but use a different photograph of the player. These are SP (short-printed) cards, and carry a much higher value than the base.
As with inserts, image variations can also have parallel versions, such as this refractor of Corbin Carroll’s rookie image variation:
It can be hard to detect which cards are an image variation and which aren’t unless you’re extremely familiar with the set. However, they’ve recently put “SP” or “SSP” on the back to help distinguish them.
