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. 

IndyCar? In de collection

 While NASCAR will always be my #1 favorite in everything, don't get me wrong - I love all forms of motorsports. IndyCar is my #2 form of motorsports, or at least tied for #2 in enjoyment. Clearly #2 in form of cards in my collection, thanks to Parkside Cards. For many years IndyCar didn't get any cards produced, but starting in 2024 Parkside has released multiple IndyCar sets, the flagships of which have made their way to my collection. 

I like the 2025 set much more than the 2024 set, but whew, did Parkside make it hard to keep track of what I have. All of my collection is card number based, so if I have card #1 for example, then that spot is filled and any other card #1s are duplicates. This is not a given in 2025 Parkside because they made a major error when creating the cards. 

The first 43 cards in the set were supposed to be the driver cards, and cards #44 through 86 were supposed to be the car cards. However, Parkside issued each car card as the car's number, which, for the teams with multiple drivers, leads to in some cases 4 different cards with the same number. That's quite a mess and since I don't know enough about who drives what car numbers, I determined that I couldn't make a paper list for this set, which is very, very rare for me. 

All these cards carry the #6, and I don't even have the card that was supposed to be #6, which is Scott Dixon's driver card. (Although I have some incoming from a friend and he may be included, I will find out when I open the package)

Other than the numbering gaff, this set has almost everything I'm looking for in a racing set. In fact, I can say without question this is my favorite IndyCar set ever. 

Every driver who qualified for an IndyCar race in 2024 has a card. Perfect. 

Not only does every driver get a card, every CAR also gets a card. That's even more perfect. After all, you don't have auto racing without the automobiles. 

After the drivers and cars, each race winner gets a card for the race they won, documenting the previous season. This is exactly what I am looking for in any sports card set. 

But it gets even better! Each race also gets a podium card showing the top three finishers from each race. This is elite levels of season documenting. 

But wait, there's more! There is a subset for the season award winners! There are 5 cards in this subset but I only got one of them, for the champion. That makes a pretty good example for this subset, doesn't it?

Next comes a subset showing each team logo for all the IndyCar teams. To my knowledge, this is the first time ever in the entire history of IndyCar racing - under all names, including CART and USAC - that the teams have ever gotten team cards! This style of racing has existed for more than 100 years, and we are still getting firsts. 

Finally, the set ends with a subset of Driver Debuts. This is very cool because for most of the drivers, there were no IndyCar sets issued during that time, or for the few that were around long enough to be included in previous sets, like Will Power was, there are vast swathes of their career undocumented on cards and the sets that did include them didn't always include race action photos. I looked it up...of the 10 teams included in the Debut subset, only 4 of them had ever gotten a single card before this set's release and one of them had exactly 1 made card before last year's Parkside set. There are huge gaps in IndyCar history not documented, and I truly hope Parkside does a historical set at some point. 

There are also parallels and inserts, both of which I like better than the 2024 set, but the base set really is the star in this set. The lack of team owners and crew chiefs (I believe they are called lead engineers in IndyCar) are the only thing that keeps me from giving this set a perfect rating, yes, even with the numbering blunder. 

Although it's not really something you can tell from scans, this set also has a very interesting texture, unlike any other card sets I can recall. 

One other thing worth mentioning - and that contributes to this being my favorite IndyCar set ever - is that the back of the driver cards have complete career statistics! The car cards have 2024 specific stats.  This is something that hasn't appeared on a NASCAR card since, if I recall correctly, 2002. Possibly earlier. That's a big deal to me, and these stats are more complete than anything that has ever appeared on any other racing sets I've ever seen which, not to brag, is probably all of them. 

Honestly, finally getting these scanned, and writing this post? This set is not only my favorite IndyCar set ever, it's actually somewhere in my top 25 favorite sets ever, all sports and non-sports combined. It is structurally the best racing set issued since 1996 and to be honest, if it had the owners and crew chiefs, it would have been the most structurally perfect set in auto racing history. (The first racing set was issued the same year as the first Indy 500, 1911. It appears to have been made before the 500, and I question if it is actually a 1911 release or 1910) 

I have a new favorite card back-and it's a wrestling card?!?

 I'm not sure I've ever written about wrestling cards on Cardboard History before, and to be honest I know very, very little about wrestling and wrestling cards. Perhaps that's somewhat of a surprise because among my friends in school, going back to the 1990s, it was probably the most popular sport amongst my friends. Enough that just by listening to them that I will recognize most of the names from circa 1996-02 era. 

Even though I don't actively collect wrestling, I will take any card into my collection. They all have a home with me, and in the museum I still hope to open some day. 

Earlier this week I got a surprise in the mail which was a huge box of cards packed full to the brim. One of my friends in the blogosphere dumped his unwanted cards on me which was a pleasant surprise, and among them was a box of wrestling cards. 

2015 Topps Heritage uses the 1985 Topps Baseball design, which is kinda strange on the surface that they used a baseball design for the wrestling throwback set, but that's Topps for you. They've been producing cards since 1949 yet ONLY use their baseball designs for throwbacks, I guess. Maybe they ran out of original wrestling designs to throw back to? I'll have to look that up at some point, I suppose. 

However, that worked out well in this case because just look at that card back. It's the brightest, greenest card I've ever seen, and green has always been my favorite color, the brighter the better. The cardstock used makes it really pop, much more than the brown cardstock of the original baseball set. 

Card backs don't get a lot of love in the hobby, but the instant I saw this one while going through the cards it became an instant favorite. 

I suppose if I'm going to show the back I should show the front too.

Just like the baseball set, the front design isn't as interesting as the back. I realize while typing this that knowing Topps they have probably used this exact design in a number of baseball throwback sets but I don't think I've seen any of those yet. I now have 6 cards out of this wrestling set, so yeah, the baseball ones would be tied as favorites. 

Now that Topps has the NBA license for the first time since 2009, I am hoping we get a Heritage or Archives set again. Topps Archives actually debuted in the NBA I believe, but we only got two Heritage sets, in 2000-01 and 2001-02. Fingers crossed we get one now in the current era going forward. 

Hey you! Stay awake!

2018-19 MVP Puzzle Back #56

 

Tourna-mental

 A couple years back the NBA introduced an in season tournament. I have to be honest...I thought it was a stupid waste of time. I didn't pay attention to it at all. 

Last year, while I still don't care about the tournament itself, I did get into it, for one big reason. During the tournament, each team has a special court, which is usually some bright color. Now THAT I can get behind! I paid a lot of attention to the tournament last year, solely to see what all the different floors looked like. This year is turning out to be much harder to follow along as my local cable company took away NBATV, but I do know it's going on now. 

Earlier this month I picked up a second "box" of Haunted Hoops, and in that came my first card showing one of the Tournament floors.

Most of the floors are team colored (Rockets have a red floor, Suns orange, etc) but some of them are kind of strange. The Bucks had a blue floor and wore blue jerseys for the tournament games even though they have never used blue in their 50+ year history. Most of the teams wear special jerseys for the tournament games also but not always. The Bucks blue shown here is the same design as their normal jersey only blue instead of dark green. 

I have no idea why they did that, but who cares? It's fun and unique and that, I like. Alternate jerseys is something I specifically try to buy when I am shopping for single cards so the fact that I pulled this one is a plus. 

I actually knew if I saw any cards showing the Tournament floor I'd have to buy them, but again, I pulled this one, so the problem solved itself. 

I couldn't tell you who won the tournament last year, but the courts in vivid colors? Those I will always remember. 

I withhold the right to start caring about the tournament if the Knicks or Nets win 😆

Thank you for being a card

 Picture it. New York, 2025. An intrepid young collector learns of a new card set, and after traveling by mule all the way to St. Olaf, Minnesota, he returned with a box of cards just in time to see the herring circus. 

That collector was me, and these are the cards he returned with. 

two base cards

a vintage parallel, printed on old school brown cardstock, 

an art insert 

and a Bubbly parallel which I assure you looks better in person than it does in a scan.

You didn't have to hit me over the head with a newspaper, when I learned Cardsmiths made a Golden Girls set I had to have some. It's a little pricey at $25 for ten cards but I already have cards of so many, many men I had to make space for the Golden Girls, one of only 4 TV series I've seen every episode of. I saved the other pack and don't know when I will open it. Perhaps I'll save it for when I'm all out of monkey money to buy more cards with. 

Hooping for the Holidays

 Christmas Day is associated with cards for me. Ever since I can remember, my family has given me cards for Christmas, and I usually spend most of Christmas day opening, listing and sometimes even scanning the cards I got that day. 

Since 2018, Panini has issued a set called Hoops Winter, which is a snow themed version of the basic Hoops design. However, I have very few of them. I didn't see the 2018-19 set for sale at all, but I was able to make a huge trade for them on the Database, bringing me 75 of the 300 cards. 

I missed 2019-20 in full. I don't have a single card from that set from that season.

2020-21 is even worse. Not only did I miss Hoops Winter completely, I missed regular Hoops as well. It was a very bad time for the hobby (and the world) and is a gaping hole in my collection. 

I missed 2021-22 and 2022-23 Hoops Winter as well, but at least I got a decent amount of the regular Hoops for both seasons. 

2023-24, I was finally able to find one single blaster which meant I truly got to experience the set! 

I thought I was going to miss 2024-25, which is the final season, but a trip to my local Wal-Mart in the first week of November 2025 - a year after they were released - surprised me with 6 of them on the shelf. I could only afford one, but I am glad I got to experience the last year of the product. 

I really like the set this year. (well, last year now) They have snow built up at the top and bottom and falling throughout the photo. 

Overall I like the design of the 2024-25 set more than 2023-25. They also have Prizm parallels with big foil snowflakes which are really cool but I didn't scan yet- holding out for a Heystack someday. 

Now that Topps has the NBA license back, they released a set called Topps Holiday and lean way more into the Christmas theme than Panini did. 

Every card has the snow theme and the holly wrapping the team color border, and the colors are candy-cane bordered too! I really like these...and part of the reason I didn't have enough money for more than one blaster is that I had already ordered a box of Topps Holiday, multiple boxes of Topps flagship and other card stuff. 

One in every 10 boxes of the Holiday set includes and oversize ornament, and I was lucky enough to get one, also of VJ, making this the first time I can remember that my first two cards from a set that I got naturally-meaning not buying singles- were the same person. 

It's gigantic, it's holographic, generally awesome! I won't be hanging it on my tree - not going to risk damaging it with a hook - but I do plan to use it as the image for VJ in my Encyclopedia of People in my collection. 

For the first time in Basketball card history, Topps released an advent calendar for the Holiday set and I got one waiting for me. I will be doing this day by day in December and I am sure it will appear on Cardboard History- perhaps I'll even find the motivation to post daily.  In the meantime, I'm going to appreciate the cards I already do have. After not doing much card stuff since last winter, it's like a switch was flipped and now I'm only doing cards and not models. It's not related to the basketball and hockey seasons starting, as they were both well under way before the switch. I can't really explain it, and I'm not even sure I should even be trying to figure it out. After all, the time I spent thinking about it and writing about it could have been spent cropping scans 😁