Pack Sampling: 1998-99 UD Ionix

It's not uncommon these days to hear collectors lament over being priced out of "The Hobby". This particular complaint isn't by any stretch of the imagination, a new one, but is being magnified more by our modern social media driven world.

I'm not sure if these carping collectors are just new to the world of cards, are too young to remember, or have just forgotten, but expensive packs and/or boxes have been around for awhile now, and today's pack is a perfect example of this not-so-new phenomenon.

Were you to travel back to 1998 (where do I sign-up?), go to a card shop, and pick-up a pack of the newly released UD Ionix, you'd find yourself holding a $5 ($4.99 on the pack) pack -- and that was five bucks for just four cards by the way!

1998-99 was around the time that my interest in cards started to wane, although it would be another two more years before I'd take my decade-long sabbatical. I'm not sure if the increasing pack prices had anything to do with my diminishing interest, but I do know that I never bought any of those "expensive" packs that started becoming more common in the mid 90's. Five dollars for a pack? No thanks, I could get two packs of Topps for that price... and end up with a whole heckuva lot more cards to boot!

Even though 20+ years have passed, and I have few more bucks to spend on cards nowadays, I still wouldn't pay $5 for a four-card pack, even a pack of this "vintage" -- in fact this particular pack only set me back a dollar. However I do have to give public thanks to my mom for finding it, as it was her that called me from one of those town sales that are oh so popular here in the south, to ask me if I was interested in any of the $1 packs that vendor was selling.  This was about two years ago now, so the details have gotten a little foggy, but I do recall her finding today's pack, as well as a couple from the 1998-99 Black Diamond basketball set.

I don't know how I managed to wait so long to open this pack, but I did, and since all things basketball from this era have shot through the roof in recent years, I would imagine that this will have ended up being the only pack of Ionix that I'll ever be opening.

So, did I pull one of those elusive MJ autographs? Or maybe a Warp Zone? I don't know, I guess you'll have to scroll down a little further to find out.

Even though I've never opened up a pack of these, I have found quite a few in dime boxes over the years, so I already knew what to expect design-wise. I'm fan of this set's look, but unfortunately my scanner doesn't seem to share the same opinion, as it ended up washing out a lot of the finer details, as well as the red section on the top, and near the bottom. I snagged a pic from COMC, to try and show you what the cards are supposed to look like...

... but their picture wasn't much better, although the red shows up a little better, and you can see that there is an image to be seen through the slats.

I like the backs on this set too, they're certainly not great for stats, but I find them to be very pleasing aesthetically, so I can live without a more complete stat line.

Some people might not like that the checklist is only 80 cards deep, but having the set made up of mostly established stars and rookies doesn't bother me all that much, I do however have to point out that this was one of those sets where Upper Deck went a little overboard with their MJ love, as he's got at least a dozen different cards in here -- which seems like a bit much for an 80-card set.

Hey... it's a Houston hot pack!

Nuts, no MJ autograph! I'm okay with this pack though, all four cards were of guys that I collect, and all of said four cards were new to me, so no complaints there.

Even though I was happy with what I got, can you imagine paying five bucks for this pack back in 1998? No? Me either. And what about paying whatever crazy price these packs are going for now, and ending up with these four cards? Talk about your disappointment! For a dollar though, it was a pretty solid pack, and I certainly wouldn't hesitate to buy any more for the same price, not that I think this will ever happen again, but you never know...


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COMC Shuffle #16

Another week, another ten randomly selected cards from last year's COMC hoard.

1951 Bowman #173

Hank played five seasons in the bigs, all with the Browns. Making his debut in 1948, Hank started off like a house afire, belting a triple and a home run in his debut against the Yankees. He had an average of .400 through his first 19 games, but it was pretty much all downhill after that, by 1952, his last season, he only managed to hit an anemic .143, playing 15 games before his contract was sold to the minors. The minor league team that he was sold to? None other than the Portland Beavers, which is why I was interested in this card. Hank spent his last three seasons of professional baseball in Portland, where over the course of 349 games he would bat .259, racking up 288 hits, 138 RBIs, and 29 HRs.

2014 Panini Prizm Orange Prizms #12 (x2) 

These would've looked a lot better if Panini had made a yellow Prizm parallel, but the orange is still pretty sharp, sharp enough in fact that I wouldn't mind getting a page's worth of these at some point.

1968 Topps #415

One for the "Telstar 4" collection. This might be my favorite card from that collection so far, if only because of that batting glove! Those old school trucker gloves make it look like you're ready for a fight, meanwhile todays gloves look like you're just checking to see how thorough the maid was with her dusting.

1997-98 Topps Rock Stars #RS4

One of the top five basketball insert sets from the 90's? Definitely!

1970 Topps #375

Apparently the randomizer was really feeling the Johnny Callison this week! It's funny, before I started reading the blogs, I never paid any attention to hatless cards, they just weren't a thing for me. Now five years later, I , thanks to the blogs, don't really care too much for the hatless pics. They're just too generic, I mean if you take this card for example, I could be looking at anybody, from any walk of life, is this a card of a soccer player? An actor? Who knows?

1963 Topps #144

I don't remember when it was exactly, but sometime in the not too distant past, my dude, Oscar, showed this card in one of his card show recap videos, which made me realize that I didn't have one, and that I wanted one... so I bought one! I seem to have a bit of a Roger Maris collection going, I didn't even know that I did until just recently when I started going through, and pulling keepers, from all of my abandoned vintage set builds.

2014-15 Panini Prizm Red, White, and Blue Pulsar Prizms #205

There are few things more American than a seven-foot tall hippie!

2014-15 Panini Prizm Green Prizms #206

One of my favorite player/color combinations from the 2014 set. If someone at Panini ever sees this post, do everyone (i.e. me) a favor, and add Paul Silas to more of your products, thank you!

1966 Topps #110

Last years Spring sale started five days before one of the twice a year Nashville mega card shows, as such, I found myself up at o-dark-hundred on the morning of the show with a few extra minutes to spare, so why not go peruse COMC for the thousandth time that week? Most of the stuff was of course at the same prices that it had been all week, but while doing a random search for Ernie Banks, I found this card, and it was from a seller that had just upped their percentage off sometime within the previous couple of hours. Most of this sellers offerings were of the vintage variety, and I think I bought a few other things, but Mr. Cub is the only one that I can remember at the moment. The corners aren't mint, but I still thought that the price tag of just little over $3 was a good one. This card will also probably always hold a personal record for the earliest (around 4am) in the day that I've ever gotten a card.

2013 Panini Father's Day Progressions - Black #17

This is the Lillard that I mentioned in my Progressions post awhile back. For those that didn't see it, or don't want to go back and reread it, the short version is that I got the magenta at a show last year for a quarter, and then later that night bought this black on COMC for $0.99. So I completed half the rainbow in one day, and after a year and some change, I still only have half of the rainbow. There's a yellow on COMC right now, but it's priced higher than I want to pay, and the seller apparently doesn't realize that I'm seemingly the only person who collects these!

Last week's mix wasn't much of a mix what with all of the Prizm parallels, but the shuffler seems to have done a little better this week, more variety that hopefully will have appealed to a wider audience.


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