One for the list

I've mentioned on more than one occasion in the past that I'm not one for making lists, at least not as an adult. I used to make lists all the time as a kid, and would try to get my friends to make lists for various things as well; which didn't usually go over very well by the way. At some point, I'm assuming during my teenage years, things changed, and I went from making lists all the time, to never making them at all. About the only time I make lists these days is for the grocery store or the occasional book/card want list. 

If I were a better blogger, more organized, and got any enjoyment from making lists, I'd probably be doing a bunch of them at the end of each year; if only for the filler that they'd provide for this ever decreasing little space of mine. One such list would have to be for best cards received throughout the year. The biggest hurdle keeping me from ever doing one of those lists though is simply that I just can't remember the bulk of what I've gotten by the time the end of the year rolls around. Even in a year like this one, where I've purchased less than any year since returning to card collecting (13 or 14 years ago), I could probably only recall 5-6 cards off the top of my head, and those wouldn't even make that list. All that being said, and despite it not quite being the end of the year, one card has stood out this year and would easily make it onto a list of my top 10 favorite purchases from this year...

I like this card for many reasons, but the main one is that it feels like a perfect blend of the 80's and 90's, or at least the early 90's. Were you to remove the title of the card, Dan Marino, and all of the other football references, this image would be right at home as a poster up on some kid's wall circa 1987 (It's very Miami Vice-ish). Add Dan, and all of his accoutrements, back to the image, and you've got yourself a folder for your Trapper Keeper anywhere from 1990-94 (or in my case, your knock-off Trapper Keeper -- not complaining though). Some might say that the presence of Dan's Zubaz make this more of an 80's image, and while I do believe that they came out in '88 or '89, I think of them more as product of the 90's.

Despite this card being from 1992, I didn't see it for the first time until late last year when I came across it while just randomly looking at things on COMC. I think I stopped collecting football cards in 1992, but I don't recall ever opening any packs of Skybox Prime Time; nor do I recall ever hearing of the set since. This must be a popular card because even though it's just a base card (from a subset to boot) from the early 90's, the online prices are mostly a dollar and up. I got mine (and a bunch of other things) from a seller on Sportlots earlier this year for fifty cents -- which did seem like a lot, but it was better than all of the alternatives at the time. In a perfect world, I could see myself getting at least 8 more copies of this card to fill a page, but I suspect that I'm just gonna have to be content with owning this one. There's also a metal (?) version of this card that I'm assuming was either an insert or some sort of promo. Either way, it's kind of expensive and I don't see myself getting one of those.

By the by, Warren Moon has a really nifty card in this subset as well. I don't own one yet, but I could see myself getting a whole page of those too; and that one might actually be doable!