Top 12 Cards of 2016

2016 was a great year for me cardwise. The rest of the year? Well, it wasn't as bad as 2013 or 2014, there's that.

But cardwise? One of the best, even though I spent less money on the hobby this year, the cards kept rolling in anyway thanks to the kindness of fellow collectors. Two of my top 5 most new cards in a day both came in 2016, and both were gifts from fellow collectors. A non-blogger hit me with 1192 new cards, 1127 of them NASCAR, on July 16th, and then just in November Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown dumped a bunch of his unwanted cards on me, and I ended up getting 2827 new cards that day, the second most I've ever gotten in one day! (Thanks to the box being mostly baseball, football and naked ladies, none of which I had much of, so not a lot of duplicates). I'm writing this before Christmas, and I've already gotten 9,777 new cards in 2016. More than half of them came to me as gifts, with more than a third just from those two gift packages alone!

I decided I would go through my Excel charts, and pick out my favorite card from each month, and showcase them here in one end-of-year post.

Some months were easy, but some of them were tough. Not for lack of choice, but because I got so many great cards! Two months actually had cards that I truly feel bad to leave off, but I went both times with cards I had been chasing for 15 or more years, and that carried a lot of weight with my selections.

Here now is a look at my favorite new card from each month...some of which I've never shown on the blog before!

 January...this was the first card I got from this set, and it's Elton...with all three of the Clippers colors including a patch, plus it's SN25/25. Has a lot going for it. This won't be the last time you will see Elton in this countdown.

 February. 1997-98 Ultra is a favorite set of mine (remember it was in my Top 20 countdown of my favorite sets, which I did in January and February). I had never gotten a Platinum Medallion from the set, so I went looking for one and found Kevin Willis. Each of the Platinums are SN to 100. Later in the year I would add the Serge Zwikker from the same set. I also added the 1999-00 and 2000-01 Platinum Medallions to my collection in 2016.

 March. This is my first patch from the Brooklyn era of the Nets, and when I bought it, I didn't know it was SN1 of 25, so not only is it a bonus in that I love SN1 cards, 1 is also his jersey number!

 April is the one month I really didn't have a strong standout, usually there were one or two that stood out, a couple of months I didn't even have to really think about. This one completes the Foil set of 1996 Pinnacle. Back in the 1990s I bought a set of these at a card show, but the seller didn't know what they were doing and had included a Winston Cup Collection parallel in place of the actual #13. The Winston Cup Collection cards were one per box or less, I believe, so it worked out OK, but the set was one card short for several years.

 May. I pulled this one! It's the first time I've pulled a One of One since Christmas 2006. I never showed it on the blog because I was trying to complete the Rainbow first, but I came up short on that so it makes it's blog debut today.

 June's is a simple base card, but it's been one I've been chasing for years. I did a box of 1994-95 Topps Embossed around the year 2000, but I came up one card short...#57, this one. I've been chasing it ever since. I even had someone on the Beckett message board years ago tell me they had the card but wouldn't send to me because "it wasn't worth the effort"...even though I offered to pay for it. I finally got it on COMC this year.

 July is when I got the huge box of mostly NASCAR cards, and this was my favorite in it, that hat relic for Martin Truex Jr. is the kicker. Part of the NASCAR logo!

 August is when Panini debuted their NASCAR sets, and for the most part I'm really happy with them. I got a box of Prizm (the first set) and I knew one of the cards from that box would be the card for August. Even though I got an autograph SN10, I couldn't remember which one without looking it up...(I have several autographs from the set now) I remembered this card without any trouble and so it got the nod.

 September and November were the two toughest months for me to choose. September came down to three cards- this one, my first card from 1938 Horrors of War, my first card from any version of the 1966 Batman sets, and the Bill Walton autograph that Angus sent me for winning his contest. I ended up choosing this one because Horrors of War is such an iconic set- considered to be the most historically important non-sports set ever- and I'd been hunting for an example for so long. I thought that I had found it one other time in the past but it turned out to be a different military set from the same producer (Gum, Inc, which I believe became Bowman).

 This one stands out for the month of October. I got some great cards during the month and even a bunch from this rare set, the sticker insert in 1971-72 Topps (the first standard card sized insert in NBA history) but I had to choose the ABA logos over the NBA logos. This is, I believe, the only card ever to show the majority of these logos in color. For the Condors, Pros, Rockets and Squires, I believe this is the only time these logos appear on a card...ever.

 November was by far the hardest month to choose. I had been chasing this card for 15 years, and Racing Champions holds a very special place in my collection. I also got a great sketch card, made apparently just for me, by Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown, of Elton Brand. It came up between those two and basically the fact that I had been chasing this one for 15 years- a card I never thought I would ever get-got it the nod.
I'm basically going to say it was a tie for the month of November.

December, however, was the easiest month. Yes, I wrote up this post before Christmas, which is always a big day for my collection as my family knows what I like and treats me very well- but my very first Elton Brand Printing Plate is going to be pretty much impossible to top! I saw this card on COMC, and I had to buy it, even though it's actually the most I've spend on a single card in about 12 years- it cost me $28. Luckily, I had the money available...sometimes during the year I wouldn't have, but I did, and all was well. Ironically the card it's a plate of is ALSO a 1/1 so finding it will probably not be possible.

And that's my top card from each month. I really enjoyed doing this and I have the record of each card from each month beginning in 2014...so expect to see rundowns of 2014 and 2015 coming shortly into the new year.

I didn't want to end the year on a sad note with my In Memorium post so this goes out as the final post of 2016- my second full year of blogging, most successful by far as well, as I topped 150 pots for the first time ever...and with this being my 25th post in the month of December, it's also my most successful month of posting as well. I consider finishing a post to my liking enough to actually post it a success, by the way.