Sunday, September 30, 2018

September 2018 Card of the Day

September was a crazy month. The Sousafly Collection that I bought took up most of my card time- I spent literally a week documenting cards, and that's only from two of the 9 boxes! And it wasn't the only card I got in that time! I also took multiple trips to Lake George, I hit 10,000 photos taken on the year, and more. In the latter half of the month, I worked hard on the mystery project I teased, and since I still have so much work ahead of me on that, I expect it will take up most of my time in October as well. I'm not complaining, I am really enjoying this project actually...It's something I have always wanted to do, but couldn't. I'll explain more at a later date...

September 1st:
2013 Goodwin Champions #41
From my pack stash. Wanted to start a month on Multi-Sport.

September 2nd:
2008-09 Topps Signature Red
This card (which is SN), has been sitting in the store collated repack I purchased and have been saving for this project since September 2014!

September 3rd:
2017-18 Panini Stickers #307
 From a random pack my mom brought home from the dollar store.

September 4th:
2017-18 Upper Deck #345
From the hobby box that I've been working on since June.

September 5th:
2015 USA Baseball Stars & Stripes #82
The only actual family vacation every year is in Lake George in September, for the Adirondack Nationals. Knowing I had exactly two cards from this set, I figured that I was sure to get a new card so I brought this pack with me and did Card of the Day in the motel room.

September 6th:
2016 Leaf Babe Ruth #02
 Yes, it really has the 0 in the number. Like the USA Baseball set, I knew I had one card from this set so I was sure to get new ones. I figured that over the 4 days, I would alternate the packs. It didn't turn out that way.

September 7th: This was the big day, the Friday of the show, my favorite day of the year. While we were in the car show, my mom was in town and visited the card shop. I knew I did not have enough money to go there this year so this was a very nice surprise.
1998-99 Black Diamond #55
She purchased me a store-collated Rangers team bag, and a general, all-team Hockey one, which she gave me the next day, which, due to my health giving out on Friday, I had to go back to the show. I tweaked my back when I missed a stop coming down in Fort William Henry, so I was in a lot of pain for quite a while.

September 8th:
1996-97 Donruss Elite #4
 This was the facing card in the general hockey pack she got for me.

September 9th:
1995-96 Collector's Choice Debut Trade #T4

Right as we were leaving on the 5th, the Sousafly Collection arrived, I had no idea what exactly was in the collection, and I was thrilled when I opened it up and saw a case marked "1995-96 Collector's Choice Debut Trade (132)". My enthusiasm dampened a bit when I opened it up and realized I wouldn't be completing the insert- it was 132 copies of this card! I later found more, bringing me to over 150 copies. I've never seen that many copies of one card in one place before. My previous record for most copies of one card before was either 82 or 86, I can't remember, but I do remember it was 1992-93 Topps Mark Jackson. It's kind of hard to forget when you have that many copies of something. (I've since given most of those away). Once we got home on the 9th, I spent most of the week documenting cards added to my collection from this collection.

September 10th:
1993 Classic 4-Sport Draft Stars #DS41
September 11th:
1993-94 Hoops Magic's All-Rookie Team #4
September 12th:
1992-93 Pinnacle #34
September 13th:

1998 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Promo #BP1
I've never actually seen this show, but a new card's a new card.

September 14th:
1997-98 Metal Universe Silver Slam #19 SS
September 15th:
2006-07 Fleer #74
The collection seems to end in 2006-07, which, coincidentally, is when I stopped collecting the NBA, which I now consider one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Of course, I've gotten back into by now. This set, while I have about 20 of them now, came out after I bailed so I've never opened any of it.

September 16th:
2001 Fleer Greats of the Game #15
On the 16th, we drove back to Lake George for the Hemmings Concours d'Elegance. I was feeling terrible all week and it was 90 degrees out with 85% humidity, so it was pretty miserable. Also, I had stayed awake for 23 hours so I could get to it! I saw some college cards were coming up so I set them aside for the 16th knowing I wouldn't have the time or energy to put into finding a good new card for my collection, so I went with the proverbial low-hanging fruit, knowing I had less than a pack's worth of this set.

September 17th:
2005-06 Topps Total #319
This one did not come from the Sousafly Collection, although it did come via trade on the Trading Card Database. The person I traded with dropped this into the mail on August 6th, but it took a while to show up. I wasn't worried because I'd traded with him before and knew it would show up eventually. It did, and everything was fine.

September 18th:
1996 Overpower Card Game Riddler: Death Trap
I saw ads for this when it came out. but I never got any until Shawn Norris- ictpactman on the Database- sent me one randomly out of the blue as a random act of kindness. Fun fact: Riddler's henchwomen are named Query and Echo.

September 19th:
2015-16 Upper Deck UD Portraits #P-16
Shane from Shoebox Legends sent me a medium flat rate box of (mostly) hockey cards, and I opened the box on the 19th. I barely scratched the surface, only opening 4 team bags, but still managed to add 161 new cards on the day! It took me most of the day to document them into my collection, and that doesn't even count the paper listings.

September 20th:
1993-94 Upper Deck Hat Tricks #HT16
 Back to the Sousafly collection. I didn't want to spend another day just documenting new cards- I am almost at the burnout stage- so I just pulled one card out of a box. Turned out to be my first from this insert.

September 21st:
2017-18 Upper Deck #251
Hitting the hobby box I've been working on since June again. Opened a handful of packs today. I will try and get it done before the new season actually starts. This is actually the first card in series 2.

September 22nd:
1996-97 Z-Force #119
 Another from the Sousafly collection. I loved Z-Force when it came out, but not as much anymore. Still thrilled to get some new ones for my collection, adding 4 that day. As an added bonus, Larry Johnson is wearing a throwback jersey, something the NBA introduced that year to celebrate it's 50th anniversary.

September 23rd:
1996-97 Ultra All-Rookie #6
 1996-97 Ultra is my all-time favorite set, so I was happy to get some more inserts from it, getting two from this very insert alone that day. Even better, next out of the box was a Platinum Medallion, only my 4th of that parallel! I plan to give it it's own post at some point.

September 24th:
1996-97 Finest Refractor #154
 I love Refractors. Muggsy was my first favorite player. Put them together and you have a really great card! I pulled three Refractors out of the Sousafly boxes that day, from this set.

September 25th:
2017-18 Upper Deck #209
 Back to trying to finish off UD, this was from my blaster of Series 1. In fact, it turned out to be the only new card of the 4 packs I opened that day...frustratingly, about half of the other cards were the next number off from one I was missing. I'm getting close to finishing these off and posting a wantlist though.

September 26th, 2018:
2001-02 EX Box Office Draws Memorabilia
 I didn't have the time or inclination to do anything that required thinking, as I was not feeling too good, so I just closed my eyes and reached into the COMC box. I happened to luck out and grab an Elton, and this is one of the ones I remembered was in the box. Since I had it shipped in November 2017, and I've made and opened two more boxes since then, I don't really remember too much of what's in there.

September 27th:
1996-97 Metal Freshly Forged #12
 Back to the Sousafly box, and 1996-97 Metal, my 2nd favorite set ever. I've completed the base set a few years ago but still need a bunch of inserts.

September 28th:
1991-92 Score Canadian Bilingual #232
 Another day where I didn't want to think too much, so I just grabbed a couple of cards out of one of the Sousafly boxes. The first one was a dupe, but this one was new.

September 29th:
1996-97 Skybox #234
 This one came from the Sousafly collection as well, and it's a good thing I checked. When I was pulling cards out of the box, I was sure this one was a duplicate, and I pulled more than 2 dozen more cards after it looking for a new one. It turned out that not only was it new, one of the other cards I pulled was as well, meaning I added a half dozen new cards! Even better: because this one, and Jerome Williams' base card from that year's Hoops were both new, it means my card of the day was NOT a college card!

September 30th:
2012-13 Totally Certified Rookie Roll Call #37
Today is my brother's birthday, so I had him pick a card out of the COMC box to be the official card of the day on his birthday, and this is what he chose.

Since the schedule worked out well for this, and I've had this card in hand since around 2 AM, I was able to get everything scanned that I needed to and will actually be able to get this done and posted on the actual last day of the month! That's the first time that's happened, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the only time.

I was so busy working on documenting the Sousafly collection, and working on my new mystery project, that I only scanned 338 cards in the entire month of September. That's a crazy low amount for me. I've done more than that in one day on multiple occasions! When I am working on scanning and nothing else, I average about 150 cards a day...but if I really push it (and if my health cooperates, a real rarity) I can do about 225 a day.  My record is 369 in one day, or 82 pages (both sides). I wrote a post about it when I did it, which you may recall, but I can't remember if I used a label so I can't easily find it. Everything has to go very, very right for that to happen and I think it's only played out that way twice, but still. The new mystery project will take up a good chunk of time in October so I expect it to be another low month for scans. However, with all that said...both February and March of this year only topped out at 170something cards scanned for the month (172 and 175 respectively). Those two months were mostly devoted to doing the Excel work I put off while I was getting everything scanned for the Database. Ever since my remote hard drive died in June of 2016 I've kept an Excel chart of everything I've scanned in a specific month, so I know what I have to redo in case it happens again. I'm still trying to pin down exactly what went missing then, although I've not really tried for months now. Edit: I found the post. You can see my memory is not as precise as I'd like it to be!

Friday, September 28, 2018

Upcoming project teaser...

Here's a little something I've been working on....I am not ready to say too much but I will say it's been a TON of work on my end. Probably the second most ambitious project I've done in the hobby (with the first being to scan my entire collection).

There are layers upon layers you can't see here...

Stay tuned...
Yes, I'm trying to be cryptic here...

Back to work...

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

A NASCAR Hockey Card

If you remember my previous post about two of my sports crossing over on one card, this is not like that. This is an actual NASCAR card inserted in a hockey set!
In 1995, Classic issued a 5 card preview set for the new 5-Sport brand (replacing the 4-Sport release of the previous three years). Classic had just gotten the NASCAR license and it was the 5th sport in the set. I had no idea they issued the preview cards in the hockey set, until I got this one from the collection I just bought.

I probably would never have even known to look for it if I didn't get it, so I consider that a major victory for me. I was unaware that there was any NASCAR included in the collection when I bought it, but there were about 25 cards, mostly all from the 1995 5-Sport sets. (they issued two with the same designs, for some reason...it's Classic). I did manage to add three pure NASCAR cards to my collection though, which is pretty cool as two were from 1994 and one from 1995. Although 1998 is my favorite season in the sport's history, 1994 is my favorite season for NASCAR cards. I have not scanned any of the other NASCAR cards yet, from either the Multi-Sport sets or the pure NASCAR sets, or else you'd be seeing them here.

Saturday, September 22, 2018

Some more highlights from the collection I bought

Just some random cards I want to say something about that I found in the collection.
 This card, 1997-98 Topps Chrome #102, became the 91,000th different NBA card in my collection.
 I got a bunch of new cards for the 2000 Topps USA set, which I ranked as my all-time least favorite set. At least the Women's Team got actual in-uniform photos, unlike the Men's Team, which was all poorly done photoshop.
 2000-01 Bowman's Best is a really under rated set. And it looks fantastic in hand.
 2000-01 Fleer Mystique Gold #77. Funny thing about this set- the Gold set, which is not common, I think one per box, but I am not sure- I have gotten three copies of the Chris Porter card, this is my first card of the set that is not another example of that one card. What are the odds?
After seeing this, now I want to hunt down an actual autograph of Cedric Ceballos, Even if his actual signature looks like it reads "Glo Cilill"!
 I saw a big lot of 1991-92 Fleer and thought they were just going to be duplicates, but since I check every card just to be sure, I was able to find that two of them were the Tony's Pizza food issues, both of which I needed! (not shown: Vlade Divac)
 Another insert from 1996-97 Metal.
 These Flair Showcase cards are spectacular in hand.
 I never even noticed the Soaring Stars insert had a parallel until I got this one...which is bad as not only are they listed on the Database, more than half the set has scans. Not sure this was the best photo to use given the position of his left hand!
 1997-98 Topps was the first set I ever made a wantlist for, on Looseleaf. I didn't include these Minted in Springfield parallels, only base cards. I got one of the 4 base I needed in this collection, and I'm sure I'll find an excuse to post it, once I get it scanned.
 This card really shows the Refractor-ness of a Refractor. This isn't just a base refractor either, this is the Coverless refractor! (which means it's actually a thin plastic card, and both sides are Refractor technology)
I always have loved the 1999-00 HoloGrFx set. (even if it has a stupid name). This looks so much better in hand! This is the gold AUsome parallel of this insert, I also got the standard silver version, but have not scanned it yet. Or maybe I already had it. I don't remember. I've been through roughly 40,000 cards since I got this collection and I'm barely above "overwhelmed"!
 This card, from 1995-96 SP, is actually an error. The "Future NBA All-Stars" wording at the top is triple printed, but none of them line up, making it quite a challenge to read. The prediction was correct, though. He would be an All-Star in the 2000-01 season, and probably could have gotten more if not for a devastating knee injury that cost him all of the 2002-03 season and adversely affected his explosive jumping ability going forward.
1995-96 Ultra is one of those sets that really mean a lot to me- when I was first beginning to collect, and first learning about the sport, it was one of the first sets that entered my collection. While I only know the exact order of the first two sets for sure- 1995-96 Fleer and 1995-96 Hoops, Ultra would have been somewhere in the 3rd-5th slot for entering my collection. My gut feeling is 3rd. I'm still a few cards away but I knocked 6 off my wantlist with this collection, including all three of the rookies I needed! Not pictured, yet, are Brent Barry and Mario Bennett. I have not scanned them yet.

This was actually the first card I added to my collection from the Sousafly Collection. I was really excited when I opened the box and saw a case labeled 1995-96 Collector's Choice Debut Trade. I was a little less excited when I realized I wouldn't be completing my set...it was 132 copies of this same card! I later found more, and I'm now over 150 copies. I've never seen that many copies of one card before.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

some Serial Numbered cards from the collection I bought

If you've been reading here for any length of time, you know that Serial Numbered cards are one of my major addictions. I've never met a SN card I didn't like. Today I'm going to highlight some of them that have come in this collection- you've already seen a couple in the first post I made showing some highlights, so I'm not going to repost them. And there's a couple I have not scanned yet, too.

 1998-99 SPx Finite #131. SN5400, the 1998-99 SPx set was the first in NBA history where every card was SN. The various subsets were numbered lower than the base veteran cards. This is one of those subsets.
 2000-01 Finest #139. Surprisingly, this is my first rookie card from the set, even though I did a box if it when it was new!
 2000-01 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #93
 2000-01 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #97. This is the other card I accidentally marked as part of my collection on the Trading Card Database back in 2012, but didn't actually get until 2018. I had the Class 2 card from the box I opened when the set was new, but I mistakenly marked that I had the class 1. Now, I do!
2000-01 Upper Deck UD Exclusives #62. This one has the number clearly visible. Not every card in this parallel is so easy to read.
 I said I wasn't going to post this card, but I changed my mind. The yellow is almost invisible on the scan.
 A card from the first year of UD Exclusives! This insert would run to the end of the Upper Deck era (with the exception of 2001-02, when it was renamed UDX to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Upper Deck NBA cards). This is only my third from the set. I pulled one each from series 1 and series 2 back in the day- Michael Finley from s1, one of the dozens of Michael Jordan cards from s2. this Abdur-Rahim card is #182 and is SN 086/100.
 This card, from 1999-00 EX, is actually an error because the holofoil was incorrectly applied. For now it's part of my main collection, if I ever get another copy it will be moved to the Error collection.
I can't remember the last time I got one of the Xceeding Xpectations subset cards from 2002-03 Topps Xpectations. (SN750). It's been a long time.
This insert, from 1999-00 Fleer Mystique, is even brighter and crazier in hand than the scan shows. You can barely see the pattern in the card in the scan.