30 Day Challenge 12: A favorite card of the 1980s

Now we get into the really tough stuff. The 80s and especially 1990s are in my opinion, the best decades this hobby has ever seen. (except non-sports, which peaked before WWII). I was born in the 80s, I began collecting in the 1980s. Not as great as the 90s, but there are some very memorable sets from this time period. You have my gateway to vintage NBA cards (1981-82 Topps), the entire Star brand, the rebirth of Fleer, and the birth of Hoops- one of the only sets that's ever gotten it truly right. NASCAR starts getting cards on a regular basis in 1988, comic book based cards became a real thing instead of a rarity, plus throw in the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi sets of 1980 and 1983, respectively. The first mainstream Olympic card set dates to the 1980s as well. There are so many good choices and picking a favorite was not easy, in fact I would go so far as to say that the 1980s were tougher for me to pick than the 1990s will be- the real question there is do I pick a card from my favorite NBA set or NASCAR set? I'll be doing that as soon as I save my draft for this post, so I'll know pretty soon. My readers will have to wait 24 hours (give or take) to find out.

I seriously thought about going with a Star Wars card here...even though I am pretty down on Star Wars right now. I hate what Disney's done to it, and 2016 was the first year in my life where I did not watch any Star Wars movies. 2017 will likely join it. Still, I love the battle of Hoth and if I had a card that showed it, you'd probably be seeing it here. But I don't. I don't remember if they didn't show it on a card, or if I just either don't have it or didn't scan it. Either way, my favorite part of the Star Wars franchise does not appear on a card from the 80s in my collection, so you get NBA instead. Shocker, right?

This is one of the key cards in my collection, John Stockton's rookie card. His true rookie card, from his rookie season, not the 1988-89 card Beckett says it is. The Star company had the NBA exclusive license from 1983-84 through 1985-86, and all three sets used the exact same design, just changing the colors for each team and the year listed. (Which I've always been annoyed by, because the NBA should NEVER have just one year listed. It's just outright wrong.) But it does not detract from the greatness of Star cards.

In the 1990s I was a huge fan of the Stockton-Malone era Jazz. Their two runs to the finals, both losses to the Bulls, were so impactful that I still sort of root against the Bulls franchise to this day- despite the fact that nobody on those teams that took down the Jazz has been with the Bulls since the 1999-00 season. 

The only problem with Star is that they are hard to come by, and can be very expensive when you do. The 1984-85 set has some of the biggest names in NBA history making their card debut- besides John Stockton, you have Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon and somebody you may have heard of by the name of Jordan. Not to mention the established superstars like Magic, Bird, Drexler, Wilkins, etc. 1984-85's rookie class is one of if not the greatest rookie classes in history, and they all got their rookie cards in 1984-85 Star. I'll never be able to get most of them, but for my birthday or Christmas one year my mom got me the Jazz team set, which includes Stockton's RC as you see above. I'm still kind of shocked all these years later. It's a card I wanted but never imagined I'd ever get. I am a cheapskate, after all.

Any day a new Star card can be added to the collection is a day to celebrate. I prefer to get them in team bags but if I come across a single I'll usually pick it up anyway. Star cards, by nature, are rare enough that I know if I don't get it then, I may never get it at all. It'd be far better to have a duplicate to trade if I pick up a single and then later get the team bag, but it's never happened.

Sorry for the crappy scan. The scanner I was using at that time didn't handle the Star card fronts very well. At some point I'll rescan it, but I don't know when that will be.

Hot Off the Scanner Tray Week 18

(I normally post these only on Sundays, but I was not able to this week...so here it is on Tuesday!)

Hard to believe it will be May by the time I post this. 2016 is just flying by!

After I pulled a patch from 2015-16 Threads, I was asked on Facebook what it sells for. I truly couldn't care less (It will be in my collection forever) but I did take a look on Ebay...and saw this one for sale. Amazingly, I got it for roughly $10!

Picked up three Star cards locally. I don't like to buy loose Star cards not in team bag form, but I will if I come across them...
this one is my first card of Wallace Bryant. He only ever got two.

Remember when Phone Cards were a "thing", before the rise of cell phones?

This is a $10 phone card from 1997 Racing IQ, a set that was always hard to find. It's SN3720 on the back...one of the earliest examples of SN in NASCAR. It's never been scratched off, and never will be.

A local dealer had two Star Rubies from 1996-97 Skybox in his boxes. Now I have two (more) Star Rubies in my collection. I now have both Ruben Nembhard cards ever made in my collection- the base card and the Star Ruby are it. He's not a guy I know a whole lot about, but Wikipedia says he is still playing in Venezuela. Good for him....lots of players who don't make it in the NBA find long career overseas and it sounds like he is one of them. I was a huge Jazz fan in 1996-97, (up through the Stockton & Malone era's end) but I can't say I remember seeing him play. It may be that I didn't, or it may be I just don't remember. 1996 was 20 years ago, after all.

I really love Tobacco era cards. .

I got 11 more I could not fit onto the page, and three duplicates. They range in age from 1913 to 1939, although the card from 1913 did not make it onto this scan. They have all been cropped and posted to the Database. I will have some retroactive additions I need to make to the Sets in my Collection project! I got my first 4 Cricket cards. That's a sport I know almost nothing about.

Here is a cool card from 2009-10 Topps...

 Marc Gasol, subject of the card, is being guarded by Pau Gasol, his older brother- and the player he was traded for!

I finished the round of card cases on 4/28, and then sorted them, and began typing them in on 4/29. There probably won't be a HOST next week because it usually takes me a week to type them in, and when I'm working on the typing, I don't scan anything until I finish. The typing them in part is one of my favorite things to do so while it is a lot of work it's highly enjoyable- although this round is mostly made up of a handful of sets so it isn't as fun as it is when it's all kinds of various sets with no real rhyme or reason- and the next batch looks like be much of the same. That's not to say it's not very, very fun.

 You can really tell when I took the time to do both years of Topps Heritage!