Return of the King

As far as the blogging world goes, there was much rejoicing during the early days of the Rona, obviously not because of the virus itself, no, we're not ghouls, but a lot of us were celebrating the fact that so many former bloggers started returning to the fold, as well as all of the new blogs that had begun to pop up.

Now that we're a good six months into this thing that looks like it's going to be with us for a very long time (and by "us", I mean the world, thanks CCP!), it seems like some of those who had returned, or had decided to start a blog, have already gone quiet again, or at least aren't posting with the same frequency that they had been at the beginning. There are of course many potential reasons for this drop-off, work, family, depression, etc.; after all, it's not as easy to maintain, and regularly post on, a blog, as some people would like to think. It takes much time, and quite a bit of effort to do so, and with the world being so topsy-turvy, it's completely understandable that some folks might not have that time, or want to put forth the effort, to post on a regular basis.

One of the people that returned, and thankfully has stuck around, is Kevin, aka The Diamond King. I wasn't around for Kevin's original run, but have since found out why so many people were glad to see him come back, which I would imagine by the way was nice for him, especially after being gone for so many years.

One thing that I think we can all agree on, is that Kevin certainly knows how to make a splashy return. He came back guns a-blazing with a bunch of free stuff posts - of which I've been able to claim a few cards from - as well as a variation of the tried-and-true, BFG.

It's been long enough now that I can't remember exactly how the game was played, I'm hoping that most people reading this do, but basically participants got X amount of Kevin Bucks, or was it Diamond Dollars? Oh well, no matter, you got some "money" to start out with, and then lots of cards were offered for the contestants to bid on.

I ended up being not the best of participants, as not much came up for me to bid on, and the two(?) lots did have a few things of interest to me in them, were wanted much more by some of the other players, so I wasn't about to go and try to take it from them -- that's just not my way.

So by the time the game concluded, I found myself with a wallet full of Kingbacks, which was okay, I had fun anyway. But, and it's a big BUT, Kevin wasn't having any of my walking away without a prize, and let me know that he'd be sending a consolation prize, which he did!

I had no idea what to expect from this consolation prize, whatever it was, would've been more than necessary, so imagine my surprise when a small package of mostly 90's basketball inserts arrived! But that wasn't all, there was also this...

... and these...

That's right, seven new Shawn Kemp rookies to add to the hoard, it doesn't get too much better than that! I've since forgotten the number, but these brought me to like 120 something copies. Nobody's ever sent me this many before, and likely never will again, so I can't state enough just how great it was to get them. Not that the other cards were bad either, I mean hell, they were all new to me, and all were keepers, so it's pretty hard not to me grateful to him for that.

I haven't spoken much with Kevin outside of the blogs, but I have learned three things about him: 1). He's very generous, 2). Depending on how long he's lived at his current address, we likely only lived a couple of miles apart some years ago, and 3). He's very patient. I owe him much, you'll see just how much after the next post, which will also showcase more of his generosity, and I've been very (very) slow to send him anything in return, and yet he hasn't said a single thing about it. That's patience personified. I do have a "Kevin pile" going, it's just being added to as quickly as I would've hoped, what with my not having much, or any, time to go through boxes of cards in recent months. So a return will be coming, I just don't know when.

Many thanks again to Kevin for these batches of cards, as well as the ginormous one that you'll all be seeing on Thursday, so until then...

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

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.


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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!


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Big spender

Like a lot of folks, I recently took advantage of the $3 off eBay coupon.

Like a lot of folks, I too heard about it on the Twitter... and who says that the site isn't good for anything?

And like a lot of folks, I haven't been very card minded as of late. I wouldn't necessarily refer to it as "burnout", so much as it is that my interests have just been directed elsewhere. Because of this, I initially searched for just about anything but cards (comic books, DVD's, etc.) in my attempt to find something cheap to use the coupon on.

After my first round of searching, I couldn't find anything non-card related, at least nothing that was going to be ending during that two-day window that the coupon was good for.

Begrudgingly, I did end up looking at cards. I couldn't find any one card that was just a shade over $3, so I ended up getting three cards, thankfully the coupon was still good when buying from multiple sellers.

I am not a Jordan fan, and I'm overly fond of the 1998-99 UD Choice Starquest cards ('97-98 was much better), so why did I get this card? Uh????? I guess all I can say is that I don't already have one, and I knew that it was going to be cheap.

Unlike the last card, I was, and still am, a big fan of LJ. I'm also big fan of Prizm parallels, and even though I already have 3 or 4 of these green's, it doesn't hurt to pick up another copy.

This Chris Webber rookie isn't my third purchase, it was included with the LJ... not a bad bonus card!

Now that's a pretty card (please ignore my crooked picture)! I don't have too many of the light blue prizms from the 2015-16 set, so it's not really much of a stretch to say that this one is now the best of the bunch. Oh, and I will definitely be looking for more copies of this card.

After applying the coupon, I ended up paying .49 cents for each of these three cards, which isn't the greatest deal ever, but I would've been willing to pay the same amount had I come across them at a show, or even if I saw them on COMC, so...


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