Accomplishing something I've been wanting to do since the 1990s (major milestone!)

In the month of May I finally finished a quest I started sometime in the 1990s. That is to have every Nets card from the Star company! For those that don't know, Star had the exclusive NBA license from 1983-84 through 1985-86, three seasons. Each set used the same basic design, just with different colors, and they are not particularly common cards. Unlike most brands, they were not sold in mixed packs, but in bags of each team. They are all great sets, but 1984-85 is the best. Mostly because it's the largest, and includes the most players...but also because it includes the actual true rookie cards of Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, and the rest of the legendary 1984 draft class. Unlike most brands, Star actually included rookies in the sets, not waiting until the next year for most of the players, which Topps and Fleer did not do. Unfortunately for me, those cards are way expensive. I do have the Jazz set with Stockton, but I will never be able to add the others to my collection. The 1985-86 set is much smaller and isn't as comprehensive. For example, Patrick Ewing has a card, but Karl Malone does not.

I had gotten the 1984-85 and 1985-86 Nets sets sometime in the 1990s.The Nets, luckily or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, didn't have any major superstars that would put any of the three sets out of my price range...but even so, the Star team sets are expensive. I lacked the 1983-84 set. And what's more, there were no teams where I had all three years.

Thanks to Ebay, that has now changed, as I added the 1983-84 Nets set during the month of May!

 Here's the 1983-84 set, which I put together with PhotoScape. This is the rookie card of Buck Williams, who was the biggest name on the Nets for most of the 1980s. Reggie Johnson and Bill Willoughby were both new to my collection! Note the oddity of leaving Michael off of Michael Ray Richardson's card. Both Albert King and Foots Walker are wearing the alternate jersey, which is exceptionally rare on cards.

 The 1984-85 set uses a lighter blue, and is 13 players-most of the teams in the 1984-85 season got sets this large. Albert King again wears the alternate, which, until I got the 1983-84 team set, was one of only three cards in my collection to show it.

 The 1985-86 set is the smallest, at only 8 cards. The '85-86 set is also the rarest of the Star sets, and the least-well represented in my collection.

For good measure, I was also able to add the Lifebuoy promo set! I had previously gotten the Bobby Cattage card at a card show sometime in the 1990s. It's his only NBA card and thus is the key to this set. The Gminski- which mis-spelled his name as Gminsky on the back- was the 94,000th NBA card in my collection. I specifically held off on going through cards from the collection I purchased so that one of the Star Nets would be the milestone, the first time ever that a Star card was the milestone. Star was the first brand ever to make NBA coach cards, although they were never in the main set- always in related sets and promos, of which this falls under the latter.

So, I finished off two major goals here- I completed the Star Nets, and I got a run of all three years of a team! But when I was typing this up, I realized I completed another pretty awesome Milestone...I now have all mainstream Nets base cards issued from when they joined the NBA in 1976 up through 1990! I'm missing the Panini stickers, but I have all the base cards from 1990-91 through 1992-93 as well. Completing two decades' worth of my favorite team (even if one of them is not a full decade) is actually pretty amazing.

I need to find a source for those early Panini stickers....I need pretty much all of them before 1995-96.

There are promos and parallels to chase from that era, but for mainstream base cards...they are complete. That's actually kind of amazing and the ONLY team I can say I've ever completed a decade of.

This turned out to be a bigger milestone than I originally realized!