Set Building with COMC

 I showed some of the sets I've been working on with other posts but there were some other sets that the most recent COMC order got me closer to...and even a couple it finished off completely! 

1995 Select is one of my all-time favorite NASCAR sets, I would surely rank it in the top 10 and perhaps even in the top 5 all time. It's a 151 card set...when it was issued Pinnacle didn't have the license for Dale Earnhardt but they got it eventually and issued this card later. I consider it a part of the base set though and it was the last one I needed to complete the set! This is actually the only card from the set to feature photography from 1995. I have not written much about this set on the history of Cardboard History because almost all of my set building of it was done not only before I started this website, but before I even knew what the internet was;, IE, the mid-1990s. 

The next set is one I have been meaning to do a bigger post on for a couple years now but have not set aside the time to write it yet. This is the Rookie Reprints from the 1996-97 Topps Stars (as well as Topps and Stadium Club) sets. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the NBA, this was a major key event for me in learning the history of my new sport, which I started following halfway through the 49th season. As part of the celebration Topps issued a set reprinting the rookie cards of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players. I can't afford some of the original cards, and with how these have gone since the pandemic boom I can't afford the reprints in some cases either. I mostly worked on the basic set...

but I think my favorite addition was this autograph of Tiny Archibald. Only 10 of the 49 living players signed reprints and this is the 8th card from the set I've tracked down. I'm not only a Walt Frazier and a Pearl Monroe away from completing the autograph set. Someday I will, but they are above my self-imposed $20 per card limit...this will be one of the occasions where I break that rule. 

I also worked on the Chrome parallel of the set. These have gotten very expensive in the last two years, but the Refractor versions even more so...enough that I didn't get any in this order. The last time I saw a Jordan refractor for sale the bid was up to $700 something so I don't ever expect to finish that set. The basic version and the Chrome version are possible, and the Autograph set is definitely something I want to complete. At some point both of the missing autographs will go onto my Top 10 Most Wanted list on the right sidebar which is woefully out of date. 

The only hockey set I worked on was the green parallel from 2019-20 MVP. I love this parallel, which was only available via epack. I have been working on this for a while now but stalled out...I couldn't remember which cards I had purchased already and these were all purchased back in 2019 so it wasn't easy to get to them to check, so I didn't buy any more. Since I want as many of these as possible, I just sorted the set by lowest price and picked off a full page.  

While I was at it I also found this Red parallel, which was some sort of epack achievement reward. I have no idea what it was earned by achieving, but I had to  get it. The set looks great in the red border, which is just coincidentally also Blackhawks team colors. It does not appear to be a full parallel, unfortunately. I think now I have all the different color parallels represented in my collection by at least one card, at least minus the other three colors of printing plate.

The 2019-20 MVP set has become one of my favorite NHL sets. I'm actively trying to complete it- just since I began the draft of this post back on April 1st I've added 4 more via trade to the base set. The base set and the Green parallels are metallic ink, which doesn't show up all that well in scans. Hitting the parallels for this set is a well I'll be going back to many times in the future. 

Unfortunately I missed the factory set that year, the only year of the MVP Factory Set I don't have, which is sad because it's my favorite MVP set and I love parallels, and that provides 250 of them in one place. I don't want to buy random cards from it, I want to find a complete factory set at some point, but my hopes of that are dwindling as the hobby remains somewhat crazy. Not giving up hope yet but the last couple of times I checked there were none for sale on Ebay. 

I also nabbed one of the insert parallels, in this obviously numbered, die cut Mika Zibanejad from the Colors and Contours parallel of the Stanley Cup Edition insert. It's a 100 card set, and this is my second, so 98 to go...however, it's another set I don't expect to complete because I don't have any of the big names like McDavid, Matthews, Ovechkin, Crosby, etc.. This card features full holofoil so it looks a lot better in person. 

If you read the post about the printing plates I bought you'll see a base card and a parallel from the 2019-20 MVP set as well. 

The only other sets I worked on were the automotive sets which I've already shown so I won't show them again now. Thanks for reading!

it wouldn't be a COMC box without a healthy batch of my favorite players

 this box was heavy on the NHL favorites, not as much on Elton Brand or Dale Earnhardt Jr. but they were represented. 

This is a promo only available at the 2002 NBA All-Star Game in Philadelphia. I never knew it existed until I found it for sale. It's holofoil.

This oversize card is lenticular, so you can see his car or him depending on how you turn it.

This one completed a set for me, more on that in a coming post.

The only NBA Patch I added in this order.

 Not a great photo, but still an Elton I needed.

Clear plastic card!

This is the Silver Spotlight parallel of this insert, SN to 49.

Spectra is ridiculously overpriced so I've never opened even a single pack of it, and never will. 

He would eventually hold the record by himself, I believe.

This is from the National promo set.

Great shot!

I added a lot of cards of Mats in this order, I had been neglecting to chase his cards and he's less popular so cheaper than Henrik, so I was able to get more. This is an e-pack exclusive card. It would be the only card with the right team I added in this order.

I got his 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee Update card...

the blue parallel...

gold parallel...

and finally Retro parallel. I only need the Red and Black Retro now to complete the rainbow. I might actually be able to do that at some point. There is also a Retro blank back which is supposedly 1/1 which I don't really count, to me that's more like an unfinished card. but I would certainly add it if I came across it. It looks just like one of the others on the front so I don't feel it's needed for the rainbow.

Another e-pack thing. These cards are huge. Larger than a Tallboy.

Right before I shipped I had a couple dollars left, sorted by SN-cheapest, and this popped up. So it was a no-brainer, I bought it.

And the Retro parallel to the 2020-21 O-Pee-Chee set.

COMCars

It should be no surprise to my regular readers that I love car cards and try to get some into every COMC order, and this order was particularly good! 

Starting out with my oldest car card ever, from the 1911 Turkey Red Automobile Series! This was only the second automotive set ever made that I'm aware of and has been on my wantlist for a long time. A 50 card set, I don't harbor any delusions of completing it any time soon but for now I'm happy to have it in my collection. You can see I lowered my usual standards...a card missing chunks of it is one of the things that I usually don't go for, but here I made an exception. When you are dealing with a card that's 111 years old you are more willing to compromise.

Making some progress on the 1953-54 Topps World on Wheels set. The first card shown, #2, is so far the only one I've found which called out a specific driver, this being Freddie Agabashian, as that is the car he drove at the Indy 500 the year previously. My favorite cards here though are the Pierce Great Arrow and the Colmbia. Love the Brass Era stuff. 

Next up we have two cards from the 1963 Topps Sports Cars set. This set surprised me because they are Tall-Boy sized. I wasn't expecting that because I had never seen them in context before. They have always either been compressed images or just random floating in space images, not put next to any other cards. Both of these two cards have some meaning for me. The Firebird III has fascinated me since I was a little kid, it's the car on the Daytona 500 trophy although there it's solid chrome. But, I've actually been interested in this car longer than I've been into NASCAR, since I got a Micro Machines version of it circa 1990. The Chevrolet Corvette SS was a purpose built race car, very famous among sports car racing, and I saw it on display at the Saratoga Automobile Museum around a decade ago. 

Considered by some the first automobile ever made, this is the Cugnot Steam Carriage of the 1770s

1895 Panhard et Levasseur

The biggest progress I made was to the 1968 Brooke Bond History of the Motor Car set. These tobacco sized cards are not particularly hard to find as you can see by how many of them I added, though I was not paying enough attention to card condition when I bought the Lancia card, more concerned with price, and got bit by paper loss on the front. Being a British set it's fairly heavy on the British cars, although it does include other countries like France (Cugnot, Panhard et Levasseur, Le Jamais Contente), Spain (Hispano Suiza), Italy (Lancia), Germany (NSU) and of course the USA (Napier, Oldsmobile, Mercer, Ford). This is a 50 card set and I'm nearly halfway on the set build...I do believe that I may actually complete this one some day. 

 The Topps Automobiles of 1977 set is a strange one. I have had very little luck finding any cards from this set. In fact, this is the first one I've ever been able to add to my collection. My dad was not a card collector but he did get a pack of this set, and three of the cards survive. All three took severe water damage in a basement flood from before the time I can remember, but I treasure them all the same. Being from only 1977 this set shouldn't be so hard to find, I would love to complete it some day but with how little luck I've had over the years I just don't know if I ever will. 

Yes, this is a car card in my mind. Arianny Celeste is one of the hosts of Overhaulin', which is a car show that I watch sometimes. It's not my favorite show as I don't like the majority of the changes they make to the cars, and I hate the pranking they do to get access to the cars, but the way everybody comes together to help the car owner, and the reveals of the car, always gives me good feelings, so I watch...usually only the second half of the episode. She wears a lot more clothes on the car show but card options were limited. 

I somehow missed the 2014 Goodwin Champions set, even though most of the other years have found their way into my collection. Occasionally I will do a random search for car company names- COMC does NOT make it easy to search non-sports cards, definitely not something they care much about- and I discovered these two cards that way. 

Fred and his brother August Duesenberg founded the car company that bears their name, and while it was not in existence for very long, (1921-37) they made the classiest cars ever made in history, in my opinion. Walter P. Chrysler is probably a more familiar name to people who aren't into cars, as the company he founded is still around and still producing cars. The Chrysler Building in New York City...which I have shown here multiple times, one of my favorite buildings in the city...was also constructed by him. He actually got his start in the automobile business at Buick in 1911, coincidentally the same year as the Buick card that led off this post was produced! He also worked at Willys before taking command of Maxwell, which was renamed Chrysler, and founding Plymouth and DeSoto and buying Dodge, to form one of the Big Three automakers with Ford and General Motors. Although the company has undergone trials and tribulations, mergers, takeovers and more, you can still go out and buy a car with the Chrysler name this very day if you so chose. 

It is my first card of all three people who appeared in this post, and now with Walter Chrysler joining my collection the founders of the Big Three are all represented. Henry Ford has many cards, several of which I have and Billy Durant has only one but I have it. Now they are all here in my collection.