An Exquisite find

 Back in the end of the 2003-04 NBA release season, Upper Deck announced a new set called Exquisite Collection. You got 5 cards per pack, and each pack cost $500, which at the time was insanely high for a box of cards. At that point in time, it was important to me to open a box of every set released. Other than 2000-01 Fleer Focus and 2001-02 Hardcourt that I missed, I opened a box of every NBA set released from 1999-00 through that time. (I did a box of most of the 1998-99 sets too)

When the set was released, I saved up and bought a box...and that instantly ended my opening a box of every set even though I still want to. Remembering now, not being able to actually actively collect every set even played a role as a contributing factor to why I quit the NBA during the 2006-07 season, which I now regret. Another BIG contributor to me leaving was my original Excel file corrupting in 2004.  It was late in 2004 that I had my NBA sets together for the last time to date. I sorted them by letter trying (but failing) to recreate what was lost. 

Exquisite Collection came out shortly after that time. I do not know when exactly that happened, but the first set that was still together, not sorted by letter with the rest of my collection was Triple Dimensions, which I got on April 8th, 2004. 

My experience at that time wasn't a great one, and once I put the cards away from that failed sort, I didn't take any of my NBA cards back out again until 2012, when I joined the Database and got back into the NBA. 

Not all of the cards were found at that time, although my paper listing showed that I did indeed have them. The box of Exquisite Collection was among the missing cards. 

Flash forward to 2025. Doing some cleaning, I found the box of Exquisite Collection I bought, but I was in the middle of cleaning and didn't take the time yet to scan it/look in it. I refound it again in April 2026, and this time I looked in it. Surprise surprise, the cards were still in it! I almost NEVER leave cards in the packaging they came in, I tried to keep them all together in the same style boxes, specifically so they would always be with the other cards in my collection. This was actually somewhat of a big surprise to me because it's so rare. 

I probably had not seen these cards with my own eyes or held them in my hands since late 2004. 

The packaging on the cards is pretty extensive. 

There's an outer carton...

Inside that is a brown cardboard box, and inside That box is a bag. Inside the bag is this wooden case with a glass placard on it. 

Inside THIS box is full felt lining on both top and bottom, and yet another box. 

and FINALLY inside that we get to the cards. 

The only base veteran card in the pack was this Jason Kidd, which is probably the second best possible card the pack could have contained. Only Elton Brand would have been better. I do not have his card from the set even today. 

The base set is only 78 cards, a very small set. There are the base veterans, but technically this is also a base card. Each pack contained 1 autographed rookie patch card. 2003-04 is one of the best draft classes in history, and the LeBron James card from this set sells for a LOT. Like the gross domestic product of some small island nations. 

Unfortunately I was not lucky enough to pull LeBron. Nothing against Zarko Cabarkapa but this is a card I could buy for well under $100*. The patch comes from the Rookie Photo Shoot, not game worn, either. 

Next up was a gold parallel of Steve Francis. Yes, it's numbered to 25 but I've never been a huge fan of his. 

The next card is this jersey parallel of Steve Nash. I do not like Steve Nash. I also pulled a card of him from Ultimate Collection. Without something like the Database existing in 2004 I didn't know if this was a parallel or an insert back then. 

Final card was this patch autograph of Tracy McGrady. It's nice. even with a single color patch (this can only come from the number on the jersey) McGrady is a Hall of Famer and it was obvious he would be even by that point in his career. I have 3 or 4 autograph cards of his. 

What's the best part of finding this, aside from finding cards I knew I had but didn't know where they were? I didn't remember the Nash or McGrady at all, and I didn't have the inserts listed in my paper listing! I had no idea they were in my collection, since I hadn't layed eyes on them in 22 years. 

I did not feel like I got my money's worth for $500. Little did I know this would be what most of the hobby would be these days, which is nothing short of disgraceful. Upper Deck produced Exquisite Collection until 2009-10, during which season the NBA pulled their license. This was the only box/pack of the set I ever opened, or ever will. 

OK, before I published this post I thought to look up this set and maybe add the Elton Brand card to my collection. I had no idea what these cards were going for now. The cheapest card I could find is $50 and it's badly damaged, and even the base veterans are not available under $100. That's such a shock to me, because they aren't really great cards. Even the empty wooden box is available for sale without the carton or the baggie it comes in or any cards...for $215. That's insane. There's only one copy of the Elton card currently available, and it's $199 + 20 more for shipping from Thailand. Nope....that's a card I'll never collect. These cards are not worth the money they are selling for. 

Are you kidding me? This has to be money laundering or something. No sane person would spend that much money on this card. I know the hobby has gotten stupid lately but this is just so egregious. 

I got this card on his birthday

 Since I finished typing in all my collection data to Excel a couple years ago, I realized that there would be instances where I got cards the same day players were born. I started keeping records on when I got cards regularly in 1999, but was spotty in 2000 until early 2001, but then I kept it up pretty well until 2006, then did it correctly again in 2009-current. So it's not foolproof but there should be instances. 

As I was editing some scans on the night of April 13th, I decided to look up some of the players that I thought might be matched to a card addition date. 

On the third player I tried, I got a match. Nothing for Cam Reddish or Luka Doncic, but 2nd generation NBA player Cole Anthony was born on May 15th, 2000. 

On that day I show one card being added to my collection, Elton Brand's Topps Chrome rookie card. 

Cole Anthony card I was editing scan of, 2024-25 Haunted Hoops

This is the card I added to my collection the day Cole was born.  Unfortunately being a Chrome card it scans terribly.

Pretty cool that it randomly happened to be a card of my all time favorite NBA player. While I do keep track of when I get each card it doesn't really stick in my memory, for the most part. Certain cards I've gotten for my birthday or some Christmases do, and others I remember that I got them for Christmas but not WHICH Christmas. Most of the time if I want to know when I got a card I have to either pull out my paper listing or now, much easier, look on my Excel chart. 

Because Elton was already a favorite by that point, it's entirely possible that I got other cards that day but I only bothered to write the date down for his card. At this point in time I have no idea, but it's early enough of a date that I may not have done fully accurate record keeping at that time. 

I have dates recorded for 490 cards of Elton, and this is the 7th earliest. I am closing in on 600 cards of him so even my favorite's records are nowhere near complete.  I accidently typed in an acquisition date of 1991 for a card issued during the 2009-10 season so I can't say everything is 100% accurate but I find all this stuff endlessly fascinating and will probably post about it again in the future. Now I need to figure out when I got that one. Probably 2019 and I just reversed the digits and Excel auto filled it to 1991 instead of 2019 but who knows, lol.

New People March 2026

 March was a crazy month. I had a very painful surgery as I've written about which put me out of action for a couple weeks. I still managed to scan 1465 cards, which is the most I've done in a month since January of 2025. I was really enjoying the scanning process when I was able to. 

140 new people were scanned this month. A pretty good mix of every topic except racing- none were new from there. The G-League cards I got for my birthday in October, but just got scanned, added a lot of people making their first appearance. 

Ever since I started the Alphabetical Directory, now 7 years and 4 months ago (!), letters M and S have been in a battle for the lead with most people scanned. M hit 1400 people this month, with 1404. S fell JUST short, with 1399 people, but B actually took the lead, with 1406 people! I believe this is the first time B has ever held the lead although I'd have to go back and reread all the monthly recap posts to be sure. 

Letter H became only the fourth letter to have 1000 people scanned this month as well, coming in at 1009. 

47 new people joined my collection, with the majority of them coming from two stacks of football cards I was given, and the Topps Now Olympic cards, of which 19 of 21 arrived during the month of March. They just barely didn't fit into one screencap so some names are repeated here. 

3000th Knicks card scanned!

 During the month of March I scanned the 3000th Knicks card in my collection. It's not the 3000th, but the 3000th scanned. That's a pretty cool milestone and I wanted to get a post out of it. Although I have not finished this month's upload yet, they join the Celtics, Bulls, Warriors and Lakers as the only teams to hit that mark...although there's a pretty high likelihood that 5 to 10 more teams may reach that mark by the end of 2026, maybe as soon as April. 

This was the 3000th scanned:

and this was 3000th actually uploaded:

I would like to have the Knicks take the top spot in my collection tally but there are just so many more cards available for the Bulls and Lakers that I doubt it will ever happen. 

don't do what I did

 For literally years now, my dentist has been telling me to get my wisdom teeth out. I didn't want to do that. My thought process was "I'm going to keep my teeth for as long as possible" 

BIG mistake. My bottom left wisdom tooth broke off over the course of a few months and there was no pain at first so I figured the problem solved itself. 

I could not possibly have been more wrong. In February it got infected. I got medicine and it had stopped hurting, I had an appointment with the dental surgeon and I had him take out the other one that WAS hurting, on the right side. That one healed really quickly and essentially painlessly. I didn't need an ice pack and by day 3 I didn't even need pain medicine for it. 

Then the bottom left one got infected again, I took more medicine and had the appointment for March 16th to get it out. At that point I was actually looking forward to it because the two infections really were bad. 

Then I got it done...and it is the worst thing I've ever experienced. Because it was broken down to the gumline, he couldn't just grab it and pull it out. He had to use a drill to dig out all of the pieces, and it was excruciating. I've broken multiple bones including crushing part of my back, I've stabbed myself, I've drilled myself, I've burned myself...a couple years back they started doing a root canal before the numbing agent took affect...NONE of that compared to this. I've been living in constant pain 24/7/365 for 20+ years and this was by far the worst. 

It's been over a week now and it's not fully healed. There is still pain, although it's gotten to the point where I'm not bothering to take pain medicine anymore, I'm used to some pain. I can't guarantee I won't take some later though. 

My point is, if you need to have a tooth removed, do it BEFORE it breaks off. 

To make this somewhat relevant to Cardboard History, here are the three cards I have that are most tooth themed. Racing cards in 1996-97 got weird and in 1997 there was an entire shark themed set for some reason. These were the autograph cards from the set. 

a brief tale of redemption

 Back on February 4th, I purchased a box of 2024-25 Credentials from my local hobby shop. Each box promised one autograph but mine was in the form of a redemption. I entered the number into the Upper Deck website and waited for the card to arrive. Yesterday, it did. 

This is only my second hockey redemption since I began collecting the sport actively in January 2017. This is my 9th card of Gauthier but first autograph. It is only my 2nd Anaheim Ducks autograph also. 

Since I mostly do lower-end cards it's pretty rare for me to pull a redemption or an autograph in hockey. Looking at my collection records, it appears that I hadn't pulled a hockey autograph since March 2024, almost two years. 

While I am a set collector at heart and a fan of parallels (which this one is, by the way) it's still a nice feeling to pull something special for your collection. 

New People February 2026

 February was a weird month. I really enjoyed scanning and I did a lot of it - 1237 cards in total. This is despite the fact that I took roughly a week off surrounding the wisdom tooth removal which I had done on the 11th. 

I used the time I was recovering from that to FINALLY sort and post the Busch and Truck series cards into albums for each team on Cardboard History Gallery, something I've been wanting to do for a while but hadn't put aside any time for it. Now, finally, more than 7 years after I launched it, the Cardboard History Gallery is fully built! Now from here on, it's just maintaining with what I scan each month. 

For being the shortest month of the year, I scanned a LOT of new people...130. Of the 130 new people, 47 are women, which may be a record. I began scanning the PWHL cards and I finished the 2025 Donruss WNBA blaster I bought, which provided the majority of the women. 

Among the bigger names were Megan Keller, Olympic Golden Gold scorer, Marie-Philip Poulin and Nyara Sabally, the last New York Liberty player I was missing from my collection that got included in the 2025 Donruss checklist. 

I added 572 new cards in February, with almost 400 of them coming via trade on the Database. Most of them were people previously in my collection, but there were some new people too. 

I actually scanned almost all of them, too. Five of the hockey players arrived via trade on February 28th and I just didn't have time to scan them, and the Olympics athletes I was waiting until I had enough of the Topps Now cards to scan a full page of just them, and enough have arrived that that is now possible, so expect to see them in the March update.