It'll take more than a Penny Sleeve to cover this thank you post!

Back when I had some minor milestone- I don't even remember what it was, because I have the memory span of a squirrel, I gave away some cards. (and this was only a month or two ago!)  I was not expecting any thank you gifts, but Jon from A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts sent me one anyway. Jon is fairly new to the Blogosphere so if you have not seen his blog before, take a look.

Jon sent along some really great stuff...not a duplicate in the bunch! I don't know if he checked my wantlists or just got lucky, but all the vintage NBA he sent me was new, and that can be a bit of challenge as I have roughly 75% of all 1970s NBA cards, including all from 1975-76 through 79-80.

This was the last one out of the box but the first one I'm going to show...a card from 1970-71 Topps! I had not gotten any new cards from this set since 2003 or 2004. Over a decade! Even better, it was a player I did not have in my collection! Rich Johnson actually is a 1 Hit Wonder, this is the only card he ever got.

He sent 6 cards from 1972-73 Topps. For some reason this set was always very hard for me to find. I have the 1971-72 set complete, and I've got more than three-fourths of the next two sets after it, but according to the Database, I have only 31% of this set, and that's with adding a dozen or so during 2015. 6 new ones makes this package the largest input of new cards from this set in a single day for me in over a decade. Nate Thurmond is a big deal, too! I scanned all six and will show them now.

1972-73 Topps was the first set to show unedited action photos since 1961-62 Fleer

He sent along several 1973-74 Topps cards, and 1 card from 1974-75 Topps, but I have not gotten them all scanned yet. I've only gotten 1 of the cards from 1973-74 Topps scanned and that is below. I didn't want to wait any longer before posting and I don't know when I will get to them, so this one has to do for now.

I'm always happy to get new ABA cards, I've always had an affinity for the ABA.

First out of the box was a pack of 1992-93 Fleer/Spalding promo. I had never been able to hunt these down before. 1992-93 Fleer is one of my all-time favorite sets, so I was very happy to get these. I didn't scan the cards yet, so here's the pack. I have not really mentioned it much but I also love promos, so these were a nice treat!

A few posts ago, I mentioned that there was a GI Joe card set I knew existed, but didn't have any of. Jon hoped he was sending me that set, but without knowing it, he sent me something better- a GI Joe set I had no idea existed! And he sent me the entire 55 card set! I'm shocked! Thank you! Apparently, in 1987, Comic Images issued a GI Joe set, with most, if not all, of the artwork coming directly from Marvel's comics. The set was issued 6 years into the run of GI Joe, when it was at it's peak. The cards are somewhat crude- I'm not sure if there are two in the set that are cut to the same size- but who cares, this is from the glory days of GI Joe, and even better, I had no idea they existed, and now I have them complete!  Here are three cards from the set.

Thank you again Jon, this was an excellent surprise and every single one of these cards will have a happy place in my collection for years to come!

By the way, Merry Christmas to my fellow Bloggers! My family knows me very well and I am sure I will have new cards to post about tomorrow, Christmas is usually the day of the year where I get the most cards- all gifts from my family. Even if by some chance they went a different route this year, I'm sure I'll still be able to put a post together about memories of cards I got for Christmas...there are lots of them, and had I had more forethought on the topic, I would probably have posted about that this year as well. Well, I can't cover every topic during Cardboard History's first year, can I? :)