New Elton Brand cards from the collection I bought

It was announced yesterday that Elton has been named new GM of the 76ers. This is an incredibly rapid rise through the ranks- after he retired at the conclusion of 2015-16, he joined the management staff, and spent last season as the GM of their G-League team. Now, the Sixers brought him up to be the manager of the big club. How cool is that? Especially because the Sixers have a very, very good chance to be championship contenders for the forseeable future, with Joel Embiid proving worth the wait, Ben Simmons trailblazing the point-forward role, and last year's #1 pick Markelle Fultz still an intriguing prospect after missing most of last season with a shoulder injury. And, oh yeah, no LeBron to have to worry about in the playoffs.

These cards, though, they are from long before the GM days. I didn't know, going in, if there would be any Eltons in the collection. It turned out that most of the collection is from the same time I built the majority of my collection, with both trailing off during 2006-07. So, since I have more than 500 Eltons already, and most of them being from that time, getting 4 new was a very pleasant surprise.

1999-00 Upper Deck Power Deck. These cards, inserts in the Upper Deck brand, were actually CD-roms, but I never played any of them. I had the technology- I could still play this one, if I wanted to- but I was afraid of them getting scratched up so I never did. This one came missing the holder that they came out of the packs in, and the back came to me slightly scratched up already. I may pull the holder off my Steve Francis example and put it on the Elton card to prevent further damage. (I've never been a fan of Francis)

1999-00 Upper Deck Gold Reserve Gold Strike! #GS10. Luckily, Gold Reserve was a one-year only release in the NBA. All the base cards have the player images with a yellowish brown tint. All the cards in the set are on mirror foil, which, as you all know and can see here, scans terribly. The Gold Reserve base card is one of only, I believe, three RC of Elton I don't yet have. I have to admit, I was a lot bigger fan of mirror foil cards before I started scanning my collection in 2009. Now I really dislike them. I thought this set was great when it was new.

2001-02 Fleer Premium Solid Performers #24 SP
The funny thing about this card is that I added it to my collection on the Trading Card Database all the way back in 2012. I have had the jersey parallel of this card since it was new, but the standard insert was missing. I have found two cards now in this collection where I added the wrong one on the Database in 2012. The second card should appear in the next post, probably.

2004-05 Diamond Collection All-Star Lineup Pick the NBA All-Star Starting Lineup! #AS38.
This insert has the longest name of any set in NBA history that I am aware of. Some people include Upper Deck before Diamond Collection, but that's not how the set was marketed. It was a one-year only release. The code on the front could be entered into a long-dead website to win a trip to the All-Star game. Cool thing about this photo is that San Diego Clippers throwback. That doesn't appear on too many cards, unfortunately. Most of the time when the team does throwbacks it's to the Buffalo Braves era.

It's also highly unusual for an insert set name to include an exclamation point in the title, but here we have two of them!

Since I finished the square box, and moved into the long boxes, the cards have gone from being sorted by person to sorted by set, so there is a possibility that there are more new Eltons awaiting me. I'm especially hopeful for some blocks of 2006-07 releases because once you get to there, I need more than I have, and I need quite a few 2005-06s as well.