What dreams are made of

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I came literally 5 minutes away from dying. I got out of the hospital on April 30th but I consider May 1st the first day of the beginning of my new life- I was so tired I pretty much just fell asleep after watching a movie with my brother on the 30th- I really didn't do anything.

So every May 1st my family celebrates the fact that I am still here. This year's celebration they went all out...and I accomplished something I only dreamed of doing.

One thing is that my brother got me a smart phone. I've been happy with my "stupid phone" but he got a new smart phone last month and I loved it. I decided within a matter of minutes after looking at his that I wanted one so he got me one. I mostly use it for games- Simpsons Tapped Out is my favorite. It's also going to help me with my collection as I'm going to be creating a new page on the top of my blog here, that will be a list of the card numbers I need from sets. I am in the middle of a couple of other projects so I have not started yet, but it will be much easier when I am out to pull that up and look at the list than try and go through each set on the Database.

The gift my mom gave me is what this blog post is about.

I opened up the card she gave me and saw this hand-made sign...WOW! I was pretty well stunned- for me this is a lot of money to spend on cards. I took a few hours to think about what I wanted to do, then I decided that I was going to try and get each of the missing sets from my collection- something I've always dreamed of doing, but never had the money available to do.

There were 48 sets missing from my NBA collection, and two from NASCAR, one of which was promo/factory set only so it doesn't really count as essential to be complete.

This has been my main goal, to have at least one card from every set ever made in my collection. In my first go-round with the NBA (1996-2006) I had accomplished it, I thought, but I found two sets I missed totally from 2005-06 once I got on the Database. One of the reasons I walked away for a while was because I was frustrated with the super-expensive sets that killed my project of having every set represented in my collection; I knew I lost it in 2006-07 and later in that season I walked away, which I now regret immensely.


For NASCAR, I had NEVER gotten it where I had every set, even though I have been collecting NASCAR non-stop since 1993. I got most of them but there were a few expensive sets I missed.

The list of missing sets included some that were pretty darn expensive when they were new. Panini's Flawless sells for $1200 a box, Upper Deck's Exquisite Collection sold for $500 a box. There were multiple years of each set missing, they are just too pricey for me. But maybe I could get a single card...



I DID IT!  Every Missing set, real set, non-promo....This completes a project I've been dreaming about doing since the 1990s; I don't remember exactly when this concept hit me, but it's been something I've been working on for as long as I can remember!
Here is a screencap of my chart of missing sets as of 5/1/2016. Look at it now, and it is significantly smaller. It's not totally empty- 1996 Maxx Premier Series still eludes me for NASCAR, but it was a promo set and only issued in factory set form- so while it's something I want to have in my collection, it's not a necessity to consider my collection complete. Panini's Eminence for the NBA is still there. How I loathe this set. The box sold for $6000- yes, that is correct, NOT a typo. Each card in the set is numbered to 10 or less. The cheapest one on COMC was $150 for one card. I can't do that. I won't do that. However...I'm not totally sure the set should be counted for the NBA. There were a lot of baseball people included in the cut signature insert- far more than NBA people in fact. That checklist also included non-sports people and possibly athletes from other sports as well. I have not decided if that makes the set a multi-sport set or not...I can't decide, but I kind of hope that it is, so I can ignore it and not have it on my list of missing sets.

Now, here are scans of the card fronts each of the missing sets. I was able to get all of them and then some, which will lead to another post in the very near future.

What I did was get the cheapest card available for each set. Most of them were pretty cheap, but a couple of them were more expensive. I think the highest I paid for any of them was $10. There were a couple of instances where I didn't get the cheapest- there was one set where for literally 3 cents more I could get Elton Brand, so I did, and there were a couple where for a nickel or so I could get a person not in my collection, so I did that too.

2006-07 Upper Deck Chronology Stitches in Time Gold #SIT-RF

2006-07 Exquisite Collection #16

2006-07 Ultimate Collection #4

2007-08 Chronology #266

2007-08 Exquisite Collection #50

2007-08 Finest Refractor #55

2007-08 Luxury Box #93. New person as well as set!

2007-08 SP Rookie Threads Rookie Threads #RT-JG

2007-08 UD Black Autograph #AU-AL

2007-08 UD Premiere #114

2007-08 Ultimate Collection #47

2008-09 Exquisite Collection #45

2008-09 UD Black #62

2008-09 Ultimate Collection #40

2009-10 Exquisite Collection Extra Exquisite #X-TO

2009-10 Limited #4

2010-11 Elite Black Box #77

2009-10 Playoff National Treasures #195 (New person!)

2010-11 Timeless Treasures #17

2011-12 Panini Preferred #94

2012-13 Elite Elite Series #144

2012-13 Flawless National Treasures Black Printing Plate #44

2012-13 Panini Signatures #59

2013-14 Flawless Magenta Printing Plate #18

2013-14 Immaculate Collection #99

2013-14 Innovation #22

2013-14 Spectra #22

2014 Press Pass Five Star Holofoil #10

2014-15 Flawless Flawless Finishes #FF-JG

2014-15 Gala #63

2014-15 Immaculate Collection #22

2014-15 Panini Luxe Die Cut Autograph #DC-DMC

2014-15 Panini Noir Chinese New Year Jersey #CJ-PB

2014-15 Panini Preferred #529 (new person!)

2014-15 Paramount #43

2014-15 Prestige Plus Connections #6

2015-16 Gold Standard #59

2015-16 Limited #190 (new person!)

2015-16 Revolution #137

2015-16 Select Prizm #19

I really wanted to get this post up a lot sooner, but I was sick for most of the month of May and I was also working on the foils and finests before the scanner got too scuzzy to use. I finally finished scanning all the cards on June 17th, the day of posting! A large portion of the post was written back in early May.