NBA Advent Calendar day 16

 

I've already talked about Jase Richardson and Draymond Green in previous packs from getting different cards of them. The Evergreen insert of Damian Lillard is cool but it just seems so weird to see him not in the Trail Blazers colors. Noa Essengue is a rookie and I don't know much about him honestly. 

NBA Advent Calendar day 15

 10 days until Christmas, hard to believe. 

Getting closer on the Making the Nice List insert and never will complain about a plaid. I still think of DeMar DeRozan as a Raptor. 

Advent Calendar day 14

 Today sees my first card of #1 draft pick Cooper Flagg to be pulled from a pack, although second overall as I got one of the Topps Now cards. 

NBA Advent Calendar day 13

Barely got today's post up in time. Chronic health problems kicking my butt today. Just something I've been dealing with my whole life basically. 

Really like the Garland card. His dad Winston played in the first NBA game I ever saw. That's only my second card of Missi. 

NBA Advent Calendar day 12

 First half of the Calendar is now done. Good news today is I got my first card of Nique Clifford, bad news is that all today's cards got a slight curve to them from the calendar. It's not too horrible and hopefully will go away over time when they are stored in with other cards. 

NBA Advent calendar day 11

 

Another pack where the first card is a duplicate and the last one is damaged. I've always liked Draymond and I got a Nets card so it's not too bad. 

NBA Advent Calendar day 10

 Slipped and fell in the snow today. Was laughing at the time but now the pain is kicking in as the adrenaline is wearing off. Didn't stop me from opening the calendar for that day though.

I've already pulled a handful of cards of both Bryant and Murray-Boyles, it feels good to get rookie cards again. I haven't been buying much over the last few years. 

NBA Advent Calendar day 9

 Another pack today that gives me my first card of someone, this time Yanic Konan-Nederhauser. 

I have to admit though that today's arrival of Archaeology Magazine is more exciting to me, it's my favorite publication and the Top 10 Finds of the Year is my favorite issue every year. 

NBA Advent Calendar day 8

 Another pack, another first card that's a duplicate. The Plaid is #2 overall draft pick Dylan Harper, who is Ron Harper's son. The Evergreen set appears again and the last card is a new person for my collection, Kasparas Jakucionis. 

NBA Advent Calendar day 7

 One thing I've noticed in the Advent calendar is that the first card of the pack is always a duplicate from the mega box I bought, while the last card is always a new one. That's not necessarily a bad thing because the Advent calendar has them jammed into that plastic tray pretty tightly and not every card has come out clean...although unfortunately for me it's usually the last card that's getting damaged. Sigh. 

Ingram is a dupe and will be set aside for Sportscard From the Dollar Store unless he specifically tells me he doesn't want it. The rest are all new and will stay with me. At some point I need to look up how to pronounce that bottom right guy's name. Or just watch a Hornets game and hope they mention him. I missed both games against the Knicks this year unfortunately. 

Fishkill NY Card Show Report December 6th, 2025 + Advent Day 6

 I made it to my third monthly card show of 2025 today, 4th overall, and the last show of the year. At least last one I will go to. If you recall, my only specific card goal for the year was to get to one of the shows and I would say I succeeded in that. 

The show was a little smaller today than I expected, with some of the usual dealers not being there. I suspect that may be because the day started with some light but accumulating snow, with freezing rain predicted although it got sunny by noon and no rain came. Still, I know some of the dealers come from pretty far away and they probably didn't want to risk it. 

However, I collect three sports and non-sports, so even with the lower number of dealers I still found plenty to add to my collection, plus I picked up some gifts for other bloggers and purchased the gift I'm giving for the Trading Card Database Secret Santa. It was a very successful show. 

So much of the modern NBA scene is Prizm cards, which I am not overly fond of, but I do like the parallels. That was most of the purchases I made. The dealer I bought the Marvel cards from is pretty sure he has the last card I need to complete the 1994 Marvel Universe set, so we exchanged emails and he's going to let me know if he can locate it and I'm going to send him the other inserts from that set I'm close to completing. If I remember correctly I need one or two of the Clear insert and 1 of the Power Burst so it would sure be nice to get those completed. After I picked out the other Marvel cards and the 4 orange NBA parallels plus the cut off Jayson Tatum he let me pick out two more cards so I got the top Psylocke and the Black Cat parallel for free which was very nice. I'll have to shop from him more in the future. The Decade of Excellence Perkins, the SN Udrih and the Hakeem insert came from his dad, who he shared a table with. The Jokic Court Kings card is my first from that set.

My last purchase of the day....and one of the biggest purchases I've made in years...was the LeBron USA card. They are very, very rare. I didn't even know they existed until I saw them on the Database and nobody seems to know where they came from. It has been speculated that they may have been part of a planned USA Basketball set that got cancelled when Fleer went out of business in mid-2004, and they got released when their archive got sold off, but that is not confirmed, just speculation. I'm a known cheapskate so for me to spend $50 on a card you know it's a big deal. I've done that I believe only 5 times, ever. Counting today. That's my first card of Pacome Dadiet which is a cool one to start with. Would have been nice if Panini had, you know, bothered to use a photo of the player wearing the Christmas Sweater to use on the cards, but you know Panini, nope! 

More Prizm parallels, Hoops parallels and a few jerseys I didn't have, plus some random cards I had to have. I think the Jaylen Brown may be my first card from that Origins set. If it's not the first it's got to be close to it. I haven't looked it up yet. 

I only bought one hockey card today, the two color jersey shown here, which was actually my first purchase of the day. I did a hobby box of the 1918 set but didn't pull any version of that RAF Founded card so I had to spring for the parallel today. It doesn't look like the Advent calendar includes any of the normal parallels from the Topps Holiday set, so I bought two as singles today. 

All of these Prizm parallels came from the same dealer. The 4 to the right of the hockey card above also did.

These all also came from the same dealer. Some are numbered. All 4 Autographs are players making their first appearance in my collection, and I rarely turn down a Nets (or Knicks) jersey card under $5. This one was $3, and actually let's be honest, the only time I will skip one is when I already have it. 

After the show I opened my Advent pack for the day. I guess my previous musing about the Making the Nice List will not be accurate as the Evergreen insert debuts today. I like it, a lot. Die cut, holofoil, and very green. Green has been my favorite color my whole life, so naturally I like green cards. The background of my posts almost became the neon green that I use for post titles and whatnot, but it was too bright, it actually hurt my eyes. It was like that for a couple minutes only back in 2014 when I was first setting up, and I wish I had taken a screen shot. 

Topps NBA Advent calendar day 5

 Don't feel like writing too much tonight. 

Jase Richardson is the son of Jason Richardson who I remember when he was a rookie. Seems like yesterday but no, it was 24 years ago. 

New People November 2025

 November was a HUGE month for me for cards. I don't know why, but like I've mentioned before once November came it was just like a switch flipped and all I wanted to do was card stuff. It's not tied to the seasons for two of the three sports I collect starting, because they were both well under way when that happened. 

I ended up getting 1647 new cards in the month of November, which is not only the most for any month this year, it's literally 1/3rd of all the cards I've gotten in 2025. Of those cards, a whopping 180 of them were new people never before seen in my collection, which is, I believe, the largest number of new people since I began keeping track of monthly additions when I started this blog series. It was truly a great month. 

Of the 180 new people, 70 were NBA players, with the majority coming from the 2025-26 rookie class, although that's certainly not all of them. Quite a few others were seen in the card show recap, including even one player from the 1972-73 Topps cards I got. 

I didn't accomplish as much scanning as in other months, because documenting those new cards into my collection - and getting my collection up to date on the Database, which I've gone back to - took up a lot of time. I still managed to scan 532 cards in November which was still quite a bit. 

Appearing on both charts are a large number of wrestling ladies, a gift from a fellow blogger. 

87 of 532 cards turned out to be new people, with a decent mix of subjects. Some of the NBA players I could have sworn I had already scanned, but I couldn't find any proof of that. (Alexandre Sarr, Cason Wallace in particular). As I predicted last month, Yongxi Cui, who I added to my collection on Halloween, was indeed scanned in November. 

For the wrestling people I listed them only if they have a traditional name format, even though I know they aren't really their names in most cases. I view it as no different than for example an actor who uses a stage name or an NBA player that goes by their nickname, like Bonzi Wells, or who legally changed their name, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. If they only go by one name I didn't include them, except Asuka since it's somewhat common for Japanese athletes to use only one name. 44 of the 87 new people were wrestlers. 

There were so many new people this month that I had to use 4 extra images to get them all in! I really enjoy the documenting aspect of the collection more than anything else, so a big month like this was a lot of fun. In the few days during December that it took me to do the upload of all these scans, I got more new people into my collection already. Just 4 days (and a few bonus hours in #5) and the month is already off to a great start. 

Topps NBA Advent Calender Day 4

 Four days into this project and it seems pretty clear that there is going to be a Plaid parallel and a Making the Nice List insert in each pack. The latter is a 25 card insert set so if it holds true for the rest of the box, and there is no duplication, I should come up one short of the complete insert. Not sure if I'm happy about getting that close or annoyed that they leave me one short. The Plaid parallel is 200 cards so the chances of completing that is zero, but I am fully convinced I will be chasing these in the coming years. 

Today's pack includes former #1 overall pick Cade Cunningham, a Plaid parallel of Ivica Zubac, the Making the Nice List is Jeremiah Fears, and a base card of Jamal Murray, who really should be considered a superstar more widely than he is. 

Topps NBA Advent Calendar day 3

 Today was a big day for me. It was my last model club meeting in 2025 and I made it to all 24 meetings between both clubs! I've been a member of the Town of Newburgh Model Car Club since 2002 and the Hudson Valley Scale Modelers since 2009 and I've never been able to attend all the meetings for either club in one year, and this year I was able to go to both clubs in full this year! It took a lot of effort to get my health corralled but I was able to pull it off. 

After the meeting I opened my advent Calendar pack.

Topps NBA Advent Calender Day 2

 Another good pack today, hitting a plaid parallel from my other favorite team! 

Topps Advent Calendar day 1

 Today is December 1st and that means it's time to start the Topps Advent Calendar!

This is the first time they have ever made a advent Calendar for basketball cards and I am looking forward to seeing what comes out of it. 

This is the first pack, and I'm pretty sure that Miles McBride is the Advent exclusive Plaid parallel, and it's also my first card of him! That's a very good start. 

I'm going to try and post about it every day.