Madame Tussauds and the NBA Store

Yesterday was Adventure #5 in the series that my brother is taking me on, and it was a fun one. It began with Madame Tussauds wax museum, then went to Grand Central Station. After that, we went to the Grand Central location of Midtown Comics, and the trip culminated in the NBA Store, which is someplace I've wanted to go to since I found out about it circa 2003. Unlike the 4 previous adventures, this one does include cards!

The trip down was interesting as always. I really enjoy car rides and while this one was almost exactly the same as the trip to MSG, I still enjoyed it.

George Washington Bridge

 a closeup of the GWB

 I'm not sure if that is York or New Jersey across the Hudson. Note the barge.

 driving in the city

 This is on the opposite corner of the parking garage we used. They have windows in the wall that is set up so you can see them working. Looks like there was a building there at one point and will be again. I have no idea what they were doing but it was really loud when we were eating lunch.

 no idea who this is

 Taylor Swift

 They have a little balcony where you can look out at the street. I really liked that.

 Kate Winslet (I think)

 Only one real person in this photo- the guy in the jacket on the far right. The others are all wax statues. You have, from left to right, assorted Kardashians, Adriana Lima, Justin Timberlake, Sandra Bullock, and Annie Liebowitz, which I may have spelled wrong.

 unknown Kardashian

 Morgan Freeman

 I don't know

 Justin Timberlake (partial owner of the Memphis Grizzlies!) and behind him you can see Anne Hathaway

 Sandra Bullock

 Annie Liebowitz

 Lucy!

 Jerry Springer

 Al Roker

 Michael Strahan

 Amelia Earhardt

I don't know if this will play, but it's cool.

 Queen Elizabeth

 Prince William and Kate and Prince Harry and Meghan

 The Kennedys

 Nixon, Reagan and in the background, Trump

 Henry Ford

 Martin Luther King

 Nelson Mandela

 Reagan

 George Washington

 Princess Diana

 Pope John Paul II

 Pope Francis

 Gahndi

 Yasser Arafat

 Fidel Casto

 President Obama

 A noticeably underweight Trump

 They have a whole floor dedicated to the lady Ghostbusters. The floor is dark so most of the photos didn't come out very well.

 Madame Tussaud herself.

 They have a candy store in the building. I refrained from buying anything, even though there was lots of gummi available. They also had bacon, Potato chip and pizza flavored chocolate bars...even if I was not diabetic I would not eat these.

 They also had a whole floor of Avengers. That was cool.

 At 15 feet tall Hulk is the largest statue they have ever done.

 I'm pretty sure that is a guy in a skirt. I don't know about fashion designers- my clothes generally come from Kmart.

 Heidi Klum

 Eli Manning

 Carmelo!

 Serena Williams

 Evander Holyfield

 Muhammad Ali

 Connor McGregor

 I feel sort of proud of myself that I recognized all the baseball players without reading the signs. I guess reading the card blogs pays off. Babe Ruth.

 Derek Jeter

 Mickey Mantle

 David Price

 Joe DiMaggio

 Rihanna

 Johnny Cash

 Katy Perry

 Bob Marley. Most of the statues are simply standing and smiling, that varied in the music room. I think the Bob Marley statue showed off the sculting skill the best. The part about the music room I didn't like? They were playing songs from all or most of the artists...at the same time.

 Jimi Hendrix

 Usher

 Selena

 Selena Gomez

 Lady Gaga

 Frank Sinatra is in the gift shop

 I totally zoned out and did not get a photo of the outside of Grand Central, except a few detail shots of the architecture! ugh, annoyed at myself.

 The Chrysler Building!

 I actually used my camera camera, instead of my smart phone, for this shot.

 Grand Central Station is a tour de force in architecture. The building deserves the Grand accolade and much more. It's probably the nicest building I've ever been in.

 There are constellations painted on the roof.

 We walked over and watched a train leave. (it was headed to New Haven, Connecticut)

After Grand Central Station we went to the Grand Central location for Midtown Comics, the second of their three locations I've been two in the last 6 weeks. Although this one is smaller than the original, I liked this one much more. I actually got some cards there, which I will get back to at the end of the post.

 From Midtown Comics, we walked three blocks, to the NBA store! I first learned of the NBA Store's NYC location circa 2003, and I've been wanting to go there ever since. But, it seemed like I would never go to Manhattan, so it didn't seem like I ever would get there. Well, my brother changed all that and my Christmas present was $100 dollars each to spend at the NBA store and the NHL store, which will be the endpoint of our next Manhattan trip. I chose to do the NBA store first because I had been wanting to get there so long, the expectations were high, and thus, a higher chance to be disappointed. I was not, really...more on that below.

 I don't talk about it often but I love architecture. NYC does have some neat old buildings.

 My favorite feature of the NBA store is the row of mannequins with all 30 jerseys displayed.

 Manhattan may be cleaner than I expected, but...

 Zoomed in on an unknown building right before going in the NBA store. I didn't see the netting around the gargoyles in person.

 Looking straight up from the NBA store.

 They do have some history on display in the hallways by the elevators, but it's very narrow and hard to get photos of.

 The jersey wall from inside.

 If you had $113,000, you could have brought home a 6-foot tall bobblehead of LeBron!

 The bottom elevator has modern guys. They apparently have not changed it since last year.

 a piece of the floor from the last time the All-Star Game was in MSG

 50% off Porzingis memorabilia! I had joked with my brother on the walk there about if they would have his stuff discounted, and sure enough, they did. They also had a rack of Jimmy Butler T-Wolves jerseys on clearance in the basement.

My only real disappointment with the store- although about what I expected- is that they did not have any jerseys or shirts big enough for me. They do make them, but you have to mail order them. In the store they only go up to 2X, but Large was the most common size...they had plenty of Extra Small available, too. I don't know if I've ever seen XS stickers on stacks of clothes for sale before.

 Handprints of players.

 Officially licensed mouth guards for sale.

 Now we get into the game used, autographed jerseys and other autographed memorabilia.

 This was a great, rare find. Only 100 of these were made in 1996-97 to celebrate the NBA's 50th Anniversary. 49 of the 50 Fifty Greatest signed it, missing only Pete Maravich, who had died of a heart attack in 1988. Since then we've lost more than 10 of the 50 greatest so it can never be recreated. It was the first time in my life I've ever seen a Wilt Chamberlain autograph. (below) Unfortunately, at $75,000, it was more than I could ever imagine actually spending. (To put it in perspective, I could buy 8 real El Caminos and have money left over for that price!)

 The store actually had a guard stationed in that section.

 This is the view when you first walk in, with this year's all-star stuff prominently in the opening section. Unfortunately I didn't think to take any photographs in the Throwback jersey section. My favorite part of the store, to be honest. Mitchell and Ness stuff is so expensive I couldn't have gotten any of the throwback jerseys even if they had them in my size- $300 a pop for the sizes they had. But I did get to see my all-time favorite jersey design in person for the first time.

 After the NBA store we got some hot dogs, and I took this photo from where we sat to eat them. (The hot dog cart is visible in the photo)

On the way out we were behind the Cornell University bus.

Now, I did get some cards on this trip, my first actual cards purchased on any of the Adventures.
At Midtown Comics, I was looking at the small card section, behind the counter. It was mostly stuff I was not interested in, but I saw this pack, showing the Flash.

It was too far away for me to really see what it was, so I asked the employee. It turned out to be the 1994 DC Master series, and when I found out that they were 99 cents a pack...I took all 17 they had! They had been waiting there so long that they didn't even come up in their machine. I had 38 of the 90 cards in the set, and only 2 more insert cards. Almost all of them could use an upgrade as I'm at least the third owner of them, and most of them were not really handled by people who cared about them, let's put it that way. I had never opened a pack of the set until this morning, as I was too tired to do so last night. I hope to be able to complete the set from this purchase. Five of the six cards in the only pack I've opened to date were new, so that's good!

Next, on to the NBA store. The store is mostly clothing- there's very, very little card representation. There is a wall of current and last year's team sets for the Hoops brand, and in the Throwback section, there is a wall of plastic 50 card cases with cards from one team each in there. While I say wall, they were not really very many- endcap might be a better description. The cases were 10 bucks a pop, but my brother got me one for the Nets. The case had 52 cards in it, of which I only needed six. But, unfortunately, every single card in the case was damaged. The case itself was pristine, so whoever packed them must have dropped them or something, because the bottom right corner on every single card was damaged to some degree. That was frustrating, but I did add six new cards from it. I chose the Nets, because of a Sean Kilpatrick card from 2016-17 Prizm on the outside of the pack. The others were Joe Johnson from 14-15 Donruss, John Calipari and Robert Pack from 1996-97 Hoops, Jason Kidd from 2006-07 SPx and Rumeal Robinson from 1993-94 Fleer NBA Internationals, which happened to be one of only two inserts in the case. I'm going to hold off on scanning them for now, as I usually don't scan damaged cards...hoping I will get a replacement that's not damaged eventually. The Calipari will probably get scanned because I really can't stand that guy, and it's his only NBA card, and the damage is all on a white area of the card, so it won't show up in the scan, or not enough to care about.

I also got one of the Lakers team sets from this year's Hoops.

As you can see, that's not a Hoops card on the front! LeBron's Hoops card from this year does not show him in Lakers uniform. His Revolution base card was swapped in in it's place, and is the main reason I got the Lakers set- I don't have any Revolution cards from this season, though I do now. This is actually my first LeBron card in Lakers uniform. I also needed the Lonzo Ball card from the Hoops set, but the rest were all dupes, which I didn't realize was going to happen when I bought it. They also had the Knicks and a couple other teams, I think, but most were Knicks and Lakers. There were no packs or singles in the entire store.

The most interesting card I got, however, was not a traditional trading card, but does add on to the debate about whether or not I should count my post cards as part of my card collection:

A post card showing every team logo...or secondary logo. Actually, a few of the logos used here I've only ever seen AT the NBA store- specifically the Pistons DP lettermark and the Suns S, although they did just rebrand and I may have missed their secondary logo. Oddly the Knicks omits the gray triangle behind the wordmark and basketball, and the Hawks logo is the vintage logo- the current logo is this logo shown but with a circle of writing around it. This design as shown was last used in 1993-94! Since this card was issued in 2017- most likely the end of 2016-17- the T-Wolves have totally redesigned their logo and the Nuggets have changed the colors on theirs.

They also had a rather generic NYC skyline with NBA Store logo, and you better believe I got one of them too!

I also got a keychain.

All in all, it was an excellent trip! I really enjoyed Madame Tussauds a lot, and highly recommend it.

I ended up taking 769 photos on the day, which is my 4th most all time for a single day. Once I removed the family photos and the rejects, I had 709 photos to post, and you can see them all HERE on my website.