Familiar names

Given how big the blogging community is (or was), it's not overly surprising to find that a few of us share the same name, after all, there are only so many names out there, or at least there were before everyone started pulling 'em out of their butt so that their kid's could be "unique" -- but I'm not talking about those, no, I'm talking about some of the more familiar names...

... like Matt! We've got more Matt's than a 24-hour Fitness...

... there's no shortage of Chris' either...

... how about Greg's? Yep, we got those too...

... got a couple of Jeff's in the fray...

... did I already mention the Chris'? Pretty sure I did, so how about Adam's? Got 'em!...

... There are Mark's and...

... Marc's...

... Nick's are represented...

... there's even more than one Trevor now...

... and there's at least a few Jim's...

... but to my knowledge, there's only one Billy! And thanks to the generosity of that one and only Billy, I, and a number of other people, were gifted some cards as part of his blog (Cardboard History) anniversary a couple of months back.

I was quite pleased with my selection, all guys that I collect, and a "Sick Hit" to boot. Well, technically it's not a "Sick Hit", in all actuality it was even better than most "Hitz"... at least to me! I'm pretty sure that no one has any idea what I'm going on about, so let me clarify by saying that the "Hit" was the 1990-91 Fleer Shawn Kemp, a card that I'm sort of hoarding, and am always grateful to receive more of. Not that anyone cares, but I just put this card away the other day, and took a moment to count the Kemp's.This was copy #114.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Slam dump!

The miniscule amount of creativity that I possess seems to still be on vacation, so this is probably as good a time as any to dump another batch of scanned stuff from February's card show.

Everything this time will be of the basketball variety, which is basically just more cards that didn't fit into this post, or this post.

Being a card show post, there is of course going to be some shiny! Focus Pocus is one of those sets that I didn't ever see during my original card collecting run, but have grown quite fond of them since coming back.

What the Buck?

It's no secret that a lot of basketball inserts from the 90's have gone up in price over the last few years, however a few have also gone down, 1994-95's The Center Stage being one of them. It's a good thing that I don't care about such things though, I was still very much happy to find this new to me kissy faced Pippen.

Off the top of my head, I could probably only rattle off the names of around a dozen horizontal insert sets, two out of the three here would be amongst those listed. I know that there are a few more than that, but I just don't see them enough to remember them by name. I don't usually go for a lot of modern inserts, but I can make an exception for Dr. J, who had to of course go and scan poorly, so...

... here's a slightly better look at him.

 A couple of base cards from sets that I don't come across very often.

I love getting inserts of guys like Robert Horry and Jim Jackson, I just wish they would've been included in more sets. And Jim is from one of those mythical Hot Packs, which were made up of an entire insert set. It would've been so cool to open one of those way back when, the only person that I know of who did hit one of those packs, on the baseball side, is Oscar.

Game Breakers ('96-97 or '97-98) are not something that I would expect to find for fifteen cents, although I don't know how much actual demand there is for this particular pairing, as it's not like there's a ton of Jerry Stackhouse and Clarence Weatherspoon collector's out there.

Hobby Masters was, and still is, one of my favorite sets of all-time, easily in the top three. I am still just as enamored with them as I was when they first came out, maybe even more so -- especially when they're found in a dime box, or in this case, a 6/$1 box.

In a (or my) perfect world all three of these guys would have played out their careers with their respective original teams.

Look Wahad my scanner did to Tariq's Zebut card!

Another trio that should've stayed where they started!

This photo was supposed to go in one of the previous posts, but I stuck it in the wrong folder, and forgot all about it. Oh, and here's a pro tip, if you ever come across a Frequent Flyer in a dime box, buy it! You'll thank me later :)

It's only taken four months, but I'm very happy to say that this was the last of the stuff from February's card show!!! This too could be the last card show post in general for a little while longer. I haven't felt like going to Nashville, and I really haven't felt like getting up at 3am on a Saturday, hence the no shows for four months and counting. Plus there's whole lack of money thing, that doesn't help either. I'm sort of thinking now that the next one that I go to will be September's super mega show, and then that might be it for the rest of the year... such a strange year!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Expected three, got four!

I don't know if Chris, The Collector, feels the same way or not, but it seems like we have been exchanging cards for years now. I'm sure that if I took the time to go back and look, I would find that we've only been doing so for maybe a year, or a little more, but it sure does feel like it's been a lot longer than that.

The most recent mailing between us came from Chris in the form of a PWE back in December, and if there's one thing that I've learned about Chris over the last year (or more), it's that his PWE's always pack a punch, and this most recent envelope was certainly no exception!

Being a big fan of any 90's Prism cards, I was all over this John Elway after Chris made it available to any interested party. I actually thought I already had this one, but didn't mind getting another. Turns out that I had the Taraus Technologies version of this card, so the Prism was new to me -- I keep forgetting that were two different versions of the five-card Elway insert set from that year's Edge.

If you were collecting basketball cards in the early 90's, you undoubtedly remember how big of a deal the first couple of Beam Team insert sets were, well, at least the first two year's worth, they kind of dropped off in quality after that. I've seen people arguing on message boards about which set was better, 1992-93 or 1993-94, it seems a little silly to me for someone to get all riled up over such a trivial thing, but they do. For the record, I like both year's BT sets equally, while certainly different in appearance, I just love them both so much that it would be impossible for me to choose which is "better".

I was surprised to find that I didn't already have this '93-94 Penny, and it looks like I only need a couple more now to complete the set, although one of those is MJ, so I might not be finishing it anytime soon.

Here's another card that Chris made available to whoever on his blog, if memory serves, this Prizm insert came out of a repack. I wanted this card for two reasons, a) It's a pretty die-cut, and b) I actually know who Cameron Wake is, and have seen him play, which is something that's becoming rarer and rarer for me when it comes to players on modern cards. Did you know that Cameron is #2 on the list of all-time sacks by an undrafted free agent? I certainly didn't! He's 39.5 sacks behind John Randle, and at age 36 I don't think he'll be able to take that top spot, but being #2 in that category is still pretty darn impressive.

Oh, and sorry about the partial fingerprint on the card, I didn't notice it until after it was scanned. The question is, who's was it? Mine? Chris'? A Fairfield employee? Since it has since been removed, this will be one mystery that is going to have to remain unsolved!

I knew that the first three cards in this post would be coming, but Chris really surprised me with this 2018 Classics orange Charlie Joiner (which I should have went the photo route with btw). This is only my second orange from the set, and was my first Charlie Joiner parallel. I actually bid on a blue one not too long after the set came out, but didn't end up winning it, little did I know that just a couple of months later I would be the recipient of this awesome consolation prize -- which in all honesty, is much than the blue that I didn't win, if only because someone thought enough of me to send it my way :)

Thanks a bunch for the cards, Chris! At the rate we're going, I can't imagine that it'll be too long before a another package shows up in your mailbox with my name on it.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.