THIS was the best photo they had?

 I find that hard to believe! 

Let's check the back and see if that's any better...

Hrm, slightly better. 

This may well be my favorite football card now. I don't collect football, but my best friend sends me his duplicates because he knows I'll take them. This one came in his latest box and I've been laughing about it since I saw it. 

Even more fun, this is the only card from this set in my collection, so it will be the official representative of 1992 Pro Set Power in my Set Archive, which contains one scan from each major set for each subject. 

A major milestone as a consolation

 This past weekend was my favorite day of the year, the Adirondack Nationals....and I wasn't there. I had a setback with my foot injury that I mentioned in the previous post, and knew I couldn't do the walking, even though it's my favorite day of the year, as noted. 

That hurt, both figuratively and literally, and I decided I needed a pick me up...so I went through the boxes of cards that I had been getting but stashing away for the winter, when it was too cold to work on models. I didn't even want to stress my foot out so I didn't even go down and work on the stuff indoors. 

One of the boxes that I had set aside was a purchase of NASCAR cards. It was advertised as about 800 cards, but I'm not sure it was that many...unfortunately there were a lot of duplicates, up to 4 or 5 copies of some of the cards. I ended up with 279 new cards, which is more than I expected when I was first going through them. 

This card, an insert from 2017 Donruss, was the milestone, however...it is NASCAR card #40,000. I began collecting NASCAR cards on Christmas Day 1992, and have been celebrating my 30th anniversary of watching the sport for the last year and a half, lol. So it's fitting that I hit a major milestone in an anniversary year. 

Interesting that it's David Pearson as well. Card #1 was Richard Petty, the only two drivers to reach 100 career wins. 

I have started scanning again but a photo will do for now...I have not scanned the card yet but I expect to by the end of the night. 

Since I keep track of my Milestone cards, I know that it takes me on average 7 years to reach the major milestones in NASCAR, so there will still be a while before I hit 50 thousand. By that point, I fully expect NHL to overtake NASCAR in the collection size. The largest NASCAR set of the year is only 200 cards, and the NHL has 4 or more sets a year with that number, several sets with more than double that number. There are simply more cards that exist so it's pretty much inevitable.

Of course, all this is presuming I counted correctly, which is probably not true...but I treat it light it is. 

Thanks for reading.

This card post brought to you by...baby birds?

 As you know from previous posts, I'm mostly in a modeling mood right now. In fact, I completed 60 builds in the month of August, making it one of my very best months ever. However, I had to take a break from that for a few days. A family of cardinals built a nest right next to the door I go in and out for painting, and I didn't want to scare them into falling out, or have the parents peck my eyes out as a perceived threat. (I also dropped a full large can of paint on my toe and smashed it all up, but I'm able to hobble around). 

I decided I would let the birds do their thing and I would work on getting back up to date on my card listing. I hadn't written or typed anything since the first week of June, so that's several months worth. I didn't do a lot of card stuff in that time-I even got some blasters I didn't open specifically so I wouldn't get even further behind. I did get some stuff...but first, the bird's the word.

I did actually get them fly away on film, but it's a timelapse at 32x normal speed so hard to see. If I had known they were going to fly off so quickly I would have shot at a slower rate. They sat in the branches for more than 2 hours so I figured it would be a while. I was wrong.

Now, the cards:

I did a blaster of Upper Deck Series 3, aka Extended series, which I am still so glad they produce. My favorite card is the Dazzlers card- green has long been my favorite color, and it's blaster exclusive. Bonus, I pulled Arber Xhekaj, my second NHL card and third overall of him, making him the Letter Leader for X in my entire collection. The Brandt Clarke card is pretty cool too...it's plastic and semi-translucent. 

Then I did a hobby box of 2023 Donruss. This is my favorite set of the year, because it's the only real NASCAR set. 

What's that relic on the Suarez card? 

It's Race Used Air! No, really, Panini forgot to actually put a relic into the card. I wish I could say that surprises me, but it's Panini. I have a new entry for my Error Gallery at least.

I took in two trades on the Trading Card Database. I have had my trading turned off for a while as I just didn't want to deal with all that for a bit, but I'll be turning it back on soon. 

I got three PIFs, and I'm so deep into modeling that I have no idea when the Craftsman cards arrived. I actually opened the team bag on the 27th of August so I am counting them as new for that day. They are actually a big deal- this mailer completes not only the base set but BOTH insert sets! I believe that I now have every possible card for the 1995-96 Craftsman release, aka a Master Set. 

My mom gave me a blaster of 2023-24 MVP, the first NHL set of the regular season! Interestingly enough, a Canadiens player was my first card of the season two years in a row. 

Finally, I bought a lot of NASCAR Hero Cards, which was mostly Bubba, William Byron and Daniel Suarez, but there were a couple of other random drivers in there too. 
I have almost nothing from the Gen6 era, and while I haven't checked yet, this purchase may very well have included my first Hero Card from 2015 through 2018, or at least a couple of those years. It's a gaping hole in my collection, and one of my favorite eras of cars too. Cards in the lot ranged from 1995 through 2022. 

I have no idea when I will get these all scanned, but photos will have to do for now. 

One last thing- I had a mishap with one of the photos, the camera flash reacted with the holofoil on some of the cards. It looks cool so here it is.

Hey, I actually cropped some scans!

 Modeling is taking up almost all of my time right now. I suspect this may be the new normal for me...models taking the focus in spring, summer and fall and cards taking over in winter. with periodic appearances in the other seasons. Right now modeling is going very well so I'm going to ride that wave while I can. 

I generally don't return to the work bench after dinner. I was doing that, but it was hurting my hands to do that much modeling. So, I in theory would work on cards after dinner, but it usually hasn't worked out. Instead of doing cards, I've been doing modeling stuff on the computer' scanning decals, researching reference photos, etc, or just messing around on facebook, twitter, etc. 

Some time last month I scanned some cards...finally, in early morning hours of July 23rd, I cropped some of them! And of course instead of cropping more I came here and wrote this post, haha. I finally got caught up with the decal scanning...it's not hard, I've just been exhausted from the trip and scatterbrained. It took maybe 40 minutes to do, but over a period of 2 months. 

Anyway, enjoy some hockey scans. 

Silver paralell

1 year of my modeling setup

 July 13th marked 1 year of having my permanent modeling setup...setup. I have been spending most of my time on that hobby of late and not doing any card stuff whatsoever. 

I knew having a permanent modeling space would make my building better, but I had no idea how much better it would make it! To celebrate the anniversary, I used PhotoScape to put together this image of all the models I finished at the new permanent workspace, and it turned out to be exactly 100 builds!

I'm having so much fun with modeling right now it may be literally months before I get back to cards. That's OK...it's too cold to work on models from circa November to April so it appears my hobbies may be seasonal. 

Thanks for reading, back to building...

Unexpected card maildays are the best card maildays

 I have not been very active lately, either in writing my own posts or commenting on other people's posts, but the blogosphere has not forgotten about me. In the month of June I got three unexpected maildays and while I don't have them prepared enough to give them proper coverage, I wanted to at least get something up and say thank you to them! 

First up was a mailing from Chris, The Collector, who sent me some samplings from our local teams and some future members of local teams

Next came one from Kenny from Torren' Up Cards, and while there is a great selection here that's not all of them- some of them got sorted into my collection, back when I thought I would actually be able to get all these scanned and posted before the month ended...

and then just this week I was zapped again! The majority of both mailings was National Hockey Card Day stuff, which is much appreciated by me. 

Thanks again to both Chris and Kenny! 

The Stanley Cup Champions!

 Last night, the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup Championship! This is a pretty big deal, as the teams I'm rooting for usually never win the championship in any of the sports I follow.  But it's more than that, I actually am an NHL fan because of the Golden Knights! 

I'm sure I've shared this story before, but here it is again. 

Way back in 2016, when the team name and logo was announced, there was a thread on the Trading Card Database talking about the new logo, but not showing it. I remembered that I got the NHL Network so I put it on to see it, after the discussion- completely negative, as usual- mentioned that it was ancient themed, which is a major passion of mine. I had to see it. Well, I put it on sometime in the morning the next day, and On the Fly was repeating. I saw the logo, but I saw SO much more. I got hooked...it was quick, it was complete, I was an NHL and hockey fan from that day forward. I think I watched On the Fly repeating three times that day. Later that night, I found a local game on- all three of the teams that I get local broadcasts for played that night, and I don't remember which one it was that I saw. I know I didn't see the whole game. I was watching in secret at that point. Only in my room with my  headphones on. I wanted to be sure it was going to be something I was going to stick with before I told my family. I kept watching in secret for the remainder of the 2016 calender year, and the start of  2017, but I couldn't keep it a secret much longer, it was taking up more and more of the thoughts and due to my health-based schedule, I was starting to miss stuff I wanted to watch when I was eating with my family, so in mid-January, I announced I was a hockey fan right here on Cardboard History, with a post humorously titled "Cardboard History on Ice". 

The very next day, I began actively collecting hockey cards. If you've been reading my writings for a while, you may have noticed that hockey now takes up the majority of my collecting posts. I've been heavily collecting, and learning the history of the sport through cards. I still have a LOT to learn, of course, but now I feel like I actually know some things and can carry on a real conversation about the sport. I am approaching 30,000 different cards and expect to hit that mark by the time the 2023-24 season starts. (I could probably get there right now if I went through everything I have stashed away, sent to me by friends in the hobby)

Of course, I started watching before the Knights began playing, and in that half a season I watched the Rangers took top spot for me...but I will ALWAYS be a Golden Knights supporter due to their essential role in getting me into my new passion. It always works out well for me because they play in the Pacific time zone, so when the east coast games end I would usually switch to them on Center Ice. They are right there at the top for me. 

Of course, my watching of hockey and the awesomeness of the sport itself soon got my mom hooked on hockey as well, and she is also a Knights fan...even if not as much since they ditched Marc-Andre Fleury...so we are both very happy to see them hoisting the Stanley Cup last night! Just for fun, here is my favorite Knights card of each of the players who raised the Cup last night, if I have them: 

Starting with the 6 original Golden Knights that remain on the team, Jonathan Marchessault was literally a bribe by the Panthers to take Reilly Smith, something I'm sure they are regretting now!

This was the very first Golden Knights card I ever got! 

Next comes the only Captain in team history...

now the rest of the skaters in alphabetical order. I have NO cards at all for Paul Cotter, Brayden Pachal, 

No Knights card yet for several players

Several skaters played for the team earlier in the season but were not on the playoff roster: 

Pavel Dorofyev, Byron Froese, Daniil Miromanov, Sheldon Rempal and Jonas Rondjberg either do not appear in my collection yet.

 

Jake Leschyshyn played with the Knights earlier in the season before being claimed on waivers by the Rangers, making him I believe the first player to play for my two favorite teams in the same season. 

The Knights had a pretty crazy goalie situation this season. Robin Lehner, who was supposed to be the starter, missed the entire season after surgery. 

Logan Thompson started the season, even becoming an all-star in his first full season...

with Laurent Brossoit backing him up. I amazingly don't have any cards of him, or at least not scanned. After they both went down with injury, Jiri Patera was called up and he also doesn't have any cards. Then they had to make two trades at the trade deadline, bringing in...

and 

Adin Hill, who started the season as the third string goaling on the Sharks, would be in net for the majority of the playoffs, with only Laurent Brossiot appearing in any other playoff games. All but Patera did come out and take their skate with the Stanley Cup which was cool to see. 

I've actually ordered a Stanley Cup Champions T-Shirt for the Knights, which will only be my second hockey shirt. If I remember, I'll post it when it arrives. 

This is a hockey high I'm going to be riding for quite a long time!