Thank you, Angus!

I'm not sure what I've done to be on the receiving  end of so much kindness, but Angus has sent me two packages that I need to cover, and I'll combine them here into one.

Make sure you read Angus's blog! You can find it by clicking on this very sentence.

The first arrived December 30th, which is unfortunate as it was a Christmas gift. It was mailed long before Christmas but the international shipping must have slowed it down.

There were a lot of highlights and even a mystery in the package.

I had no idea this card existed! I need to spend more time looking over the checklist for this set, I think. Angela and Amber Cope are twins and nieces of 1990 Daytona 500 winner Derrike Cope. They have been unable to secure sponsorship so have not really been able to do much racing.

I have very few cards that feature more than one signature on the same card- I'm not sure how many exactly but I can think of less than 10 off the top of my head. Very cool!

First out of the box was a factory set of 1994 Action Packed The Champ & The Challenger, which was a 42 card set that highlighted Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon. It was an interesting changing of the guard time in NASCAR. Earnhardt won his 7th and final Cup championship in 1994, and Jeff won his first two races that year- 92 more would follow, third most all time, but even more impressive when you consider that he did it in seasons where he only had at the most 36 opportunities to race, while Richard Petty (200) and David Pearson (105) won most of theirs in seasons when there were as many as 64 races a year. The first lap Jeff ever led in Cup was the first lap I ever saw.

For some reason the half of the set focused on Jeff has always been easier to find, while the half with Dale has always been tough. Now, I've got them all! Here's some highlights.

 I chose to highlight this one since it shows porta-potties in the background. That's not something I've ever seen on a card before!

 This photo was taken in the 1993 Daytona 500, the first race I ever saw. Jeff led the first lap after starting 3rd. He would lead more than 25,000 laps in his career.

 Dale celebrating one of his 76 career wins.

 The one problem with Action Packed cards is that being embossed, they don't always show up properly in scans. as the white line on his chin are not on the actual card.

 Alan Kulwicki, owner/driver of the #7 car, was killed in an airplane accident after 5 races in 1993. It was a rough year as NASCAR lost two major drivers to airplane crashes in 1993, and two on track at Daytona the first week of 1994.

Dale and Jeff together. They were actually friends in real life, Jeff looked up to Dale. Many fans of Dale Earnhardt refused to accept Jeff for some reason, but Dale himself did.

As with all Action Packed cards from 1994, the cards have rounded corners.

Next up was a complete factory set of 1991 Carms F1. This is a set I had never actually ever seen before! They did a good job with the cards, with most if not all of the drivers getting a portrait card, a car card and a helmet card. There are a couple of cards at the end of the 105 card set on F1 history and one about the company itself. The cards have a nice texture, feeling quite similar to 1992-93 Hoops or 1991 Ultra football.
Here are the three cards of Ayrton Senna, who was on top of the F1 world when he was killed on track.

I also like the fact that they did not censor the cards- note the prominent Marlboro sponsorship- unlike the majority of NASCAR sets, which are mostly scrubbed of any alcohol, tobacco or even prescription medicine sponsorships.

As near as I can tell, this is the only set ever issued by the company. A real shame as they did a good job.

The last section of the package is a bit of a mystery. It is various NBA cards, but with perforated edges. Cards from 1994-95 Fleer, Hoops and Ultra, including some inserts from Hoops. He found them in a dime box. While these cards were all knew I did have a couple others from 1994-95 Fleer and cards from other sets from 1992-93 through 1995-96 that I can't quite identify, not being sure where they are from or what makes up the checklist.

Only about a week later, I got another surprise package from Angus. This one, however, was not mailed from Canada...but from his Mom's place in Arizona! It seems he had gotten some cards he didn't want to transport back home to Canada, so instead he sent them to me! I'll take them! The majority of them are baseball and football, which I admit aren't my main sports, but I am always glad to get new sports cards and widen my horizons. However...I didn't look through the majority of the cards. I'm saving them for something special. A whole year, actually. 2018 marks my 30th anniversary collecting trading cards and my goal for that year is going to be getting at least one new card every single day of the year. It will be tough because I have so many NBA and NASCAR cards already. But I don't have a lot of hockey, baseball or football. There's a 99% chance that every card in those boxes is going to be new. So, I shall save them. It was hard not to go through them and see what was in there...but I think I have the control to do it. After all, I purchased that box of 1991 Olympic cards in 2014 and saved them until the 2016 Olympics, and I have packs in my pack stash that have been waiting since 2013...so 1 year? I can do that!

My favorite items however, were not cards.

This Bobblehead of Jason Kidd is! I had no idea these even existed.

And like he guessed, my Mom did love it! She's going to get it for display now that I've photo documented it for this post.

Also favorites are some post cards of the Suns. Angus went to a Suns game while in Arizona and these two post cards must have been sold by the team. This is the kind of thing that I know exists, but I never have any access to...or this great 70s style Gorilla sticker. Why do the Phoenix Suns have a gorilla as a mascot? No one knows. But he's been their mascot for decades. I used to have a code to play as the Gorilla on NBA Jam as well.

If I weren't such a Nets diehard this would easily have been my favorite item in the box. How could you not love this?

Some cards I did go through right away was this factory set of the first half of 1993 Action Packed Hall of Fame. First off, I had no idea there was a factory set available...and secondly, I had no idea that such a short set (84 cards) was issued in two halves! This is card #1-42, naturally. This rights a mistake I made. Back in 2010, before I committed to collecting the NBA full time again, a shop had a stack of this set quite large...probably most of the set if not all of it. And stupidly, I didn't get any, even though it was a set I was constantly chasing. Of course, by time I decided to start collecting the NBA again...the shop had gone out of business. So I was particularly frustrated with myself then. (although not as much as letting a large lot of Star company cards get away, but that's a story for another time)

Not all of these cards are new, but there are more new than not. My list of people missing from my collection is not showing anyone new in these cards, but there are some early, 50s era players who are pretty rare in my collection and I think are below 5 cards. Bob Davies, in the front on the bottom row, is one of them. According to my records this is only my second card of him, for example.

Unfortunately the overall card landscape for players before the 1980s who did not make the NBA's 50 Greatest Players list is pretty slim. Most of the players who played before the 1969-70 Topps set do not have a single card at all, and while it did get better when Topps started producing cards, since they issued small sets of usually 132 cards post NBA-ABA merger there are a lot of lesser known players without cards from the 1970s also. This set is one of the few that covers some 50s players, and quite a few of the cards are in color. It's truly a great set and I'm glad to have completed the first half of it.

I did look at at least one Football card.

What a name. I've now got a card of him, Marion Butts and Isaiah Pead, or I. Pead. If I had known there was so much sophmoric humor in football names, maybe I would have collected them more...and based on the look on his face, he knows this joke is being made even though this card was printed in 1989.

I did not shake this card. Yet...