Top 12 cards of 2018

It's hard to believe that 2018 is just about over. This was a wild year. The Card of the Day project saw me get a new card every day of the year...but kind of made getting new cards a chore rather than exciting. Will any of the favorite cards of each month also have been a card of the day? Let's find out! As always, I'm going into this with little to no preconceived notions of which card will "win" each month, mainly because I don't remember when I got what. That's why I keep it in Excel, which is the file I will be going through and picking what stands out to me.

January:

This card was the only card I ever had and no longer did...back when the set was new, I was in the 5th grade, and opening a pack of cards in school, I pulled this and promptly traded it away. It was the only card I ever traded that was not a duplicate, and it haunted me. I wrote up a post detailing the story in full when it arrived.

February:

I pulled this one from a blaster on February 18th, the day of the Daytona 500. The 2017 Absolute Racing set was the only one I could find for the sport. It, too, was my card of the day that day. The relic piece is part of the grillwork on the front of the car

March:

When I did a box of 1999-00 HoloGrFx new, I was not lucky enough to pull this Elton parallel despite them being one per pack. COMC took care of that. It was my card of the day on March 11th, not coincidentally Elton's birthday. (I had my mom root around in the box until she found an Elton)

April:

You may remember, I bought a box of this set at the Black Friday sale in 2017 and was highly disappointed (although this year I didn't buy anything, so it turned out to be better than Black Friday 2018). Well, the redemption card I pulled ended up showing up on April 2nd, and it was pretty spectacular! So far, four for four were also Card of the Day.

May:

Finally, a card that was NOT card of the day, but the second card of May 21st. Later that day I actually got a printing plate in the mail but I like this one better. It's die cut to the shape of a puck, it features my favorite skater in the league, what's not to like? OK, by being Chrome it scans terrible, but in hand it's great.

June:

The theme for this year seems to be cards than scan horribly. This is a card from Dynamic Martketing Australia from the Batman movie that year. The card is plastic and lenticular. If you turn it you see the movie Batmobile drive down an alley. In scan...you don't see much. I really should have tried to take a movie of it. Now I don't remember which box it's in. This was not my card of the day, but it is from June 3rd, I'm noticing that most of them have been early in the month so far.

July:

July was, by far, the hardest month of the year to choose, and I suspect it will remain that way. I got my largest ever COMC order- 400 cards- including my first 1/1 of Henrik Lundqvist (also my first NHL 1/1) and my first Dale Earnhardt Jr. Printing plate, plus my first Kahn's card, as I wrote about previously. I had to go with the Lundqvist plate from Rookie Anthology, because it's my first 1/1 from the NHL! I already had a couple of 1/1s from NASCAR, including one of Dale Jr.

August:

My love of ancient Rome is well documented. But, the ancient world is very rare to see on cards- I've probably got less than 10 cards in my entire collection about ancient Rome. So, when I was able to trade for this one with Trading Card Database member SaveDaKid, it stands out as the best of a very large month.

September:

September was the month where I bought a collection for the first time, and while I have pulled some really great stuff from it- and I'm not even halfway through it yet- a Platinum Medallion from my all-time favorite NBA set simply can't be beat. This is, I believe, the 6th I've added to my collection since the set was new.

October:

Mt first vintage league leaders card from the NHL! I got this from my mom on my birthday. I'm a big fan of cards that document the season previous, and I think the flagship set should have league leaders every year. Although this is not my first NHL league leaders card, it is my first Vintage example, and the first I've scanned. Not to mention the first that shows Hall of Famers.

November:

November was another hard to choose month. There wasn't anything that really stood out...just a lot of solid, standard collecting fare. Don't get me wrong, that IS the essence of collecting, but picking a favorite, especially when you are going on just an Excel list instead of seeing the actual images, not easy. In the end I decided to go with a card that survived all kinds of danger living in my storage unit since the 1990s, totally unknown to me that I ever had it- and I had never opened it out of it's original shrink wrap. It's a promo for the 1994 Simpsons II set from Skybox, one of my all-time favorite sets.

December was pretty easy. I knew, as soon as I got a bunch of these from one of my best friends, that it would be a card from this set...the question was, which one? Although this one is slightly out of focus- most of them are- I had to go with it. The Silhouette is legendary. The real car led to a model from AMT, and was one of the Original 16 Hot Wheels in 1968, the same year this card was made. Adding to it's legendary status is the mystery of the car- it was stolen, and never recovered. It had a custom built, matching trailer, and somebody, at a motel the night before a car show, hooked that trailer up to their vehicle and drove away. It has never been seen again, and it's fate remains one of the biggest mysteries of automotive culture. I've been aware of the car for years, but I finally added it to my Hot Wheels collection in 1994, when many of the earlier issues were released for the 25th anniversary, and I later added the AMT kit to my collection, although I have not built it yet.

Five of the 12 cards so far were Card of the Day.

Here's the Top 12 from 2017 and 2016. As I've mentioned in both posts, I plan to write one up for 2015 and one for 2014, but I still have not gotten around to it yet.