But, I did want to add one eventually, and now that I'd personally made a point of not having one, when I finally picked one up, it had to be the right one. It needed to have a nice design, feature an interesting picture of Rickey on the A's, and be an on-card auto, as opposed to the sticker autos, which don't usually look all that great. When 2011 Topps Tier One was released last year, I knew that I'd finally found my certified first auto.
The card meets all of my criteria, featuring an original picture of Rickey on the A's (Topps tends to reuse the same image a bit too often), a clean design, and a bold on-card autograph.
Although I don't own one, there's also a gold parallel (the smoky/cloudy area behind the picture is gold instead of blue), which is numbered to only 10 copies.
I'm glad the card was able to find a nice home in my collection, but it might be a little lonely, as I'm not sure how many more autos I'll be picking up in the near future. But, if they keep releasing cards that look like this, it might be sooner rather than later!