Filling Bullet Holes

 You ever get a good idea for a post title and then build a post around it? Well, that's what happened here. I was cropping some Washington Bullets cards and the title came to me. 

I only got to see 1 and a half seasons of Washington Bullets basketball before they rebranded to the Wizards, saying that Bullets was a negative connotation. For many years it was the only stick-and-ball sport name change I had ever seen, until the New Orleans Hornets became the Pelicans and the Charlotte Bobcats became the Hornets version 2. The Hornets version 1 became the Pelicans in 2013 for the 2013-14 season so it really wasn't all THAT long but it seemed longer in my head, until I did the math when making this post. 

While the Sonics became the Thunder in 2008, I was not watching basketball at that time. I now realize that it was more of a me problem, but I had walked away from the sport in 2006 and didn't return in 2012. Something I now regret immensely. 

Here are the Bullets cards that I scanned today that led to this post.

1992-93 Fleer #231. It was the back of this card specifically that I was working on when I got the post title idea. Since I have everything typed into Excel, I can actually make the post reflect the title. I have 16 Bullets base cards from 1992-93 Fleer, one of my all time favorite sets, and this is the 16th to be scanned, filling the last hole! In addition, I have two promos (From the Drake's Cakes set) and one insert of the Bullets, and they are both scanned already as well.  There are two inserts and 4 promos I do not yet have in my collection, maybe some day. 

1993-94 Upper Deck #285. For some reason a LOT of my 1993-94 Upper Deck cards are in poorer condition, with a lot of surface scratches. That is the risk you run when you build your collection via repacks, I suppose. But it has led a lot of cards to be put into the "replace before scanning" box. Let's see how this set breaks out. There are 17 base cards for the Bullets in this set, which is interesting. The 1992-93 Fleer set is 444 cards, while 1993-94 Upper Deck is 510- one of the largest sets ever made. Two of the cards are subset cards, which means the players got two cards in the set, only 13 players got cards. Calbert Cheaney got 3 cards in the base set and there is a team card. Despite being a larger set than 1992-93 Fleer, it didn't do as good a job covering the team. Pervis is the 13th base card I've scanned of the Bullets from this set, along with one insert. I have 4 inserts for the team from this set, I think. It's a little harder to figure out since Excel sorting is a little challenging to do when there are offshoot sets (Upper Deck Special Edition and Upper Deck 3-D ProView, plus the Italian and Spanish versions of the set in this case)  which it sorts alphabetically. Larry Stewart, Kevin Duckworth and Don MacLean are the three players still awaiting scans. I know that the Stewart card was damaged in the flood of 2015, almost all my cards of him were. It might be too far gone to pull a scan out of. 

The third, and actually final card for today, is this Juwan Howard card from 1996-97 Ultra. My all-time favorite NBA set. Despite being my favorite set of all time, it's fairly small at 300 cards and I have not actually completed it yet. I know I could easily go out and buy what I am missing- but that doesn't bring as much satisfaction of getting them naturally. I only have 9 Bullets cards from the base set, as well as two parallels and two inserts. This is only my 6th Bullets card scanned from the base set, and is the second of two subset cards. Interestingly, Juwan's regular player card is one that has not been scanned yet. I have scanned both insets (both Chris Webber) and both of the Gold Medallions I have from the Bullets. Besides Juwan's regular card, Rod Strickland and Ben Wallace still await scans. I do have Ben's Gold Medallion scanned. I figured I would check before I hit post, and I discovered that the 9 cards I have is actually all of them in the base set. There are 4 inserts I don't have, and 16 parallels. I have none of the Platinum Medallions for the Bullets and only the two Golds of Tracy Murray and Ben Wallace. 

So this random thought that led to a post ended up teaching me things- that I now have all the 1992-93 Bullets scanned, that I have all the Bullets from 1996-97 Ultra, and although I didn't mention it in the post previously, I found and corrected an error in my excel listing. (I had somehow credited a Charlotte Hornets card from 1992-93 Fleer to the Bullets)

Speaking of filling holes- my records show that I have 1151 Washington Bullets cards. With these three I have now scanned 869 of them. Still a long way to go scanning, although I'm working at it often. Not that I necessarily want to finish any time soon, because I really enjoy it and have no idea what I'm going to do for fun when I finish. 

Definitely a first, 37 years into collecting...

 A couple weeks back I pondered if getting a checklist as my first card out of my first pack was the first time it had ever happened. There's no real way to know. 

However, something happened this week that I am absolutely sure has never happened before. 

I began collecting sports cards in 1988, so I've been doing this a long time. I've pulled cards of thousands upon thousands of people, not just in my three main sports, but also multi-sport and I've opened a few packs of other random sports here and there. 

Until May 1st, 2025, when my family gave me a few blasters to celebrate Glad I'm Not Dead Day, the anniversary of when I got my second chance at life, and I pulled the above card, which is of Arber Xhekaj. I had never pulled a sports card of a person whose last name started with X! While this is my 4th card of him, it's the first I pulled from a pack myself, and I really think that's cool. I've mentioned him on Cardboard History before, I'm definitely collecting him. He's the first and so far only person in all three of the sports I collect to have a name starting with X, although his younger brother Florian is also in Montreal's system and may make it some day. He may have cards in the AHL set, I haven't checked yet. Not the same as making it to the top level though, and if I just went and bought it it wouldn't be as special. 

X is the rarest letter for people in my collection. While some letters are approaching 1400 different people, X has only three people, joining him are Malcolm X and Xue Chen, a Chinese volleyball player who got a card in Goodwin Champions a few years back, which I bought on COMC just because her name started with X.

I did mention sports cards because I did pull the card of Malcolm X, so now I have done this feat in both Sports and Non-Sports cards, bringing it to all 26 letters in both aspects of the hobby. 

New People April 2025

 After a VERY small March, April saw an influx in new cards, which of course led to increasing the new people scanned.

21 new people were scanned during the month of April, all of them from the NHL- and all but one from this year's O-Pee-Chee, which I bought a hobby box of during the National Trading Card Day. Jesper Wallstedt came from the NHCD set itself. 

I added 40 new people to my collection during April, and I hit another milestone- 18,000 people in my collection, with the asterisk that there are people listed that I can't quite track down, which may be typos of other people. 

Several of the people appear on both images. 

Are you a parallel?

 I love parallels. I know most of the hobby does not, but I do. What I absolutely hate- and would eliminate from existence if I could - are different cards in the same set having the same number. So-called "image variations" have been around for a few years now and really need to stop. 

I pulled this one from my O-Pee-Chee box. They are referred to as "Glossy Image Variations". I noticed as I was opening the pack that it was different from other cards due to the glossy coating the other cards didn't have, and a quick search on COMC for cards of him from this set revealed this is not his base card, thus confirming my thought that it was indeed an image variation. 

To me, I am counting this as a parallel. If it requires typing in a different set name into my excel chart or the label of the image, then it's a parallel. The Retro, Blue, Red and Orange parallels - which I have not scanned yet - those are my preferred kind of parallel. Something that is clearly different and not something that can easily be confused for a base card if you aren't paying close enough attention. 

That MIGHT be a first

 Last Saturday was National Hockey Card Day and free promo cards is a sure way to get me into my local card shop...except for 2024 when I had the wrong date and went the week after. 

While I was there I picked up a hobby box of this year's O-Pee-Chee. At 600 cards and without the artificial scarcity of the Young Guns rookie cards, I think it's my favorite set of each year. With 156 cards per box there's no way I've ever come close to completing a set, but I still enjoy it, a lot. 

This year's set may be the first time ever, in any of the sports or non-sports I collect, that my first card from the set was a checklist. 

I LOVE checklists. Always have. OPC is the only set in any of the three sports I collect that still does a pure checklist, and I don't remember the last set in Non-Sports that got one. The UD flagship also has checklists but they are on the back only, not both sides like a real checklist should be. I am the only collector I know who once listed a Checklist as their #1 most wanted card, happy to say I was able to trade for it on the old and missed Trader Retreat website back in either 2005 or 06. (1996-97 Topps NBA #111)

I don't know for sure, but I don't remember a checklist ever being my first card out of my first pack ever before. I don't even remember a checklist being the first card coming out of a lot or repack either. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, I just don't remember it happening. I did begin keeping track of the first card I get for each set back in 2014 and I know for sure it hasn't happened since then. Before 2014 is not documented but I think I would remember something like that. 

The first player card was from my team which was cool, even though he was traded between the time this card was made and when I got it. Shown here for an example of what the player card looks like. 

Perhaps best news of all, I figured out a way to type my cards in without hurting my wrist much. Basically if I type only with my right hand and hit the caps lock instead of shift key to capitalize things it's not as bad. It's cumbersome and tiring so it's still not fun, but it's better than hurting my wrist literally every card. 

New People scanned in March 2025

 It was a light month. The year started strong- perhaps too strong, as I scanned over 2000 cards in January...which burned me out. I still did card stuff in March, but I wasn't having fun and actively looked for other things to work on. 

I scanned only 111 cards in March, which is a pretty low number for me. 

There were new people scanned though, 5 in total. Interestingly enough Hershiser, McCoy and Salaam were all on the same scan. 

My new additions were even lower. I only added three cards in March- two of which were the subject of my last post. The other was a post card given to me by a member of my model club. I have not gotten a new card since March 6th, which is the longest I've gone without getting a new card since I started Cardboard History back in 2014, and the second fewest cards I've gotten in a month since I began keeping records of that...back in September 2011! (I didn't add a single new card in January 2012)

I have stuff stashed that I could pull out and add to my collection, but I just don't have the motivation to do so right now. 

It's possible I'm doing too much. Documenting is the most fun for me - more than even having the cards themselves I think - but I have multiple places I type the info into and I just haven't felt like doing that. the fact that typing is making my wrist hurt doesn't help. Just in the 10 minutes it took me to type this it's made my wrist hurt much more. Documenting my cards in my excel files is exponentially more typing than this, which I'm now pretty sure is why I don't want to do it. 

Thanks for reading.

Unexpected mail days are the best mail days!

 With the wrist injury I've been dealing with for 2+ years now I haven't been trading so mail days are pretty few and far between. I wasn't expecting anything beyond the few actual print magazines I am subscribed to. 

So it was quite a surprise when I got a letter from a name I recognized from the card hobby. An even bigger surprise awaited me when I opened it! 

Why, that is my #1 most wanted card!! 

I have been working on this set since it was issued in 1994 and they have been surprisingly difficult to hunt down. When I started keeping my Top 10 most wanted cards list, the last three cards I needed were all in the top 10. I got the other two but Jimbo eluded me. The last time I looked there was not a single copy available on either COMC or eBay! For only a 40 card set completion has been difficult, but now it's completed! 

Thank you so much Kurt!!

Fun fact: the card is a UER. Laura's hair should be brown.