A card I've wanted for 15 years

As you might know, I discovered NASCAR through the Racing Champions diecast cars, and became a fan on 12/26/1992. I've always favored Racing Champions and spent much of my life in an effort to collect every single one of them that I could. I estimate that I came up about 100 short, counting the rare Canadian only issues, although I no longer actively chase the cars I missed.

For some reason, I have not really talked about them too much on Cardboard History. It's actually somewhat surprising even to me, and I write the darn thing! (LOL)

In 1996, Racing Champions introduced the concept of chase cars when they began issuing chrome cars that were pretty rare; I have a couple of those, and I even found one on the shelves at my local Wal-Mart once. They produced the Chrome chase cars from 1996-2004, perhaps 2005, I don't remember.

In 2001, they changed things up a little bit by coming up with chase cards to go along with the cars. They came out with tire cards, autographs and sheet metal, all of which are fairly rare- a print run of 500 is the largest of any year, I believe. I never got any of them. Believe me, I looked, but they just didn't show up in any of my then-weekly trips to the stores. I've wanted one ever since.

A few days ago, one of my friends from the NUTS forum- that's NASCAR Underground Trading Society- which is THE site for trading NASCAR cards, posted up on Facebook that he had one available. I mentioned that I really wanted it, so he sent it to me. The generosity on that forum is top-notch, and not only did he send me the one I really wanted- he filled the bubble mailer with other cool stuff too, including my very first relic of a shifter boot! That'll have to wait for a future post, though, because I wanted to just dedicate this to the one card I've been after all these years.

I still can't believe I finally have one...it's a dream come true!

Another post with pictures- one of the rare times I don't have my scanner plugged in, and I didn't want to take the time to get it out. It's really a dark purple theme, with the Racing Champions logo being bright red. Not a great photo, but it gets the job done.

Thanks again Michael, you made my week/month!

2016 has seen me add a lot of great cards (OK, every card is great, but you know what I mean!) and this one is well in my top 10 favorite new additions on the year....probably top 5.