Birthday Cards (Of course I got cards for my birthday!)

Today is my birthday. My family makes a bigger deal out of it than I do to be honest, especially after I almost didn't have anymore back in 2013. (I turned 31 today, in case you are wondering). I always ask for cards, and usually nothing but cards. (This year I asked for some specific comics but didn't get any- I'll be getting them myself next month). My brother didn't get me cards, but he gave me something I have needed for a long time. A 2TB external hard drive. As I've already filled up 16 or so flash drives with my photography I REALLY needed one, and will begin exploring that after I hit publish on this post. I have been talking about getting one of these for over a year but I could never bring myself to spend the money on it when there were cards staring at me on the shelf.

And the cards, I got cards. Mom gave me nothing but cards, and I'm going to show some highlights now..

I'm just going to jump to the major milestone I mentioned in the last post- I knew I would hit 80,000 different NBA cards today. I sure did- I now stand at 80,025. It took me 19 years and 9 months to reach this milestone.
Here it is...from 2012-13 Hoops, Spark Plugs #6, Anderson Varejao

For some reason my scanner doesn't like 2012-13 Hoops so it puts lines on it. Close enough!  I actually got two new Varejaos today, I also got the Above and Beyond parallel from 2012-13 Panini Brilliance, but those mirror foil cards are not a whole lot of fun to scan so I am putting it off (LOL)

My birthday was not solely NBA...I know lately my posts have been more NBA-centric than anything else, but the NBA takes up literally 85% of my collection, so I have the most to post about. With no new NASCAR cards since last December also not helping. But there are lots of older NASCAR cards I don't have yet, and Mom got me an autograph, a relic, and an autographed relic, which scanned MUCH better than I expected it to!

Normally my scanner cannot handle any sort of depth, and Press Pass put the relics deep down into very thick cards. This time, my scanner picked it up perfectly. I don't get it, but I'm thrilled I don't have to use my other scanner than can do depth, but is badly damaged and means I have to practically recreate the scan. Off the top of my head this is only my 5th autographed relic for NASCAR. It's on-card, as well.

I got a blaster box of 2014-15 Threads. Each blaster box has two wood Rookie cards, and they are cool...

They are almost as thick as a relic, and the front of the card is truly a piece of wood. I only had two before today, from my single blaster I got when the set first came out.

Another cool card from Threads is the Team Threads cards. These are a hallmark of the Panini Threads brand, and they are pretty much the same from year to year- why mess with success? This year, the Rookie cards in this style are part of the base set, which is a first. I got Aaron Gordon from this blaster. It's only my second from the subset.

 

I really hope Panini does the Threads set again in 2015-16. They took 2013-14 off from the set, and I hope they don't again.

The relic from my blaster was Russ Smith. Russ was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies after the card was issued, but the jersey piece is from the New Orleans Pelicans- my very first jersey piece from the Pelicans! I now have a relic from every team in the league under their current name except the Charlotte Hornets, which used to be the Bobcats. (I have relics from the first Hornets, which are now...the Pelicans!) Every year there is always one rookie I get more cards of than any other- and even though I can't get as many cards as I once did, Russ Smith is still that one from 2014-15.

I also got a blaster of 2014-15 Excalibur. I really didn't like this set when I first saw it, but it's really grown on me. It's so easy to scan, it includes action shots from the season it was issued in, and it included a bunch of players who I didn't have in my collection- and I got two of them today!

 Bogdanovic is from my favorite team. Papanikolaou was not anywhere near as hard to write in my listing than I expected it to be :)

I also got my first Michael Carter-Williams on the Bucks card. Excalibur is the only set that includes images post-trade deadline. I am a fan of MCW.

My relic from the box...happened to be Chris Andersen. One of my least favorite players in the league. Still, I want to collect as many cards as possible, and that includes people I'm not huge fans of. I'm still happy to have it, as it's not a duplicate.
But the scan, though...I don't get it. There is not a lot of depth to this card, yet my scanner blurred the relic. I don't know how to explain that.

 I finally got a good scan of the Crusade insert! I have 7 of them now, three each from two blasters and one from a single pack, but the first 4 didn't scan well at all. Today, they did. I've always loved the refractor Prizm technology, and am glad every time I pull one, or three. Nash is my least favorite of the three players I got today, but scanned the best. (The others are Tim Duncan and Taj Gibson).

I can't let it go without saying how it irked me that Panini included Nash- who had retired by time the set was issued, the only retired player in the base set- yet refused to include Elton Brand in the last two YEARS worth of sets.

Overall, I got 56 new NBA cards, and 3 new NASCAR- although to be honest Mom couldn't wait and gave me the Nemechek auto on Friday :) I also opened a couple of packs of my stash of Journey to the Force Awakens but I have not scanned any of them yet. I have had an excellent birthday so far, and it's not over yet.

I also got a record number of birthday wishes on Facebook- last I checked, before I started typing this post, I was at 237...and this post took a very long time because my internet connection keeps going out every two to four minutes or so, causing me to fight with it and try to get it back again- which has taken a lot of fun out of posting.

We also had some snow, which is the second earliest I can recall!

Hot off the Scanner Tray Week 2

Finished my typing project and back to scanning on 9/29. Here are some highlights...

 My brother brought me a blaster of Excalibur. The set didn't do much for me when I first saw it but it's really starting to grow on me. This was my hit.

 2012-13 Panini Shannon Brown. One of my favorite Panini sets, this one came out of a repack my brother brought me when he brought me the Excalibur blaster.

Excalibur is one of the few sets of the season to show in action photos. I think this is only my second Hornets Version 2 action card.

My first card of Rudez. Excalibur included several players who were not in my collection yet.

 1996-97 Stadium Club Rookies II Marcus Camby. Back in September 2014 I got 6 mixboxes and I am still going through them...on the last one now. This one came out of it. I am now 3 away from the complete Rookies II set.

 1997-98 Fleer Total O Jordan. My first card from this insert!

 Every one of the mix-boxes includes usually an autograph and a relic (sometimes more than one). This box the autograph was a college card, unfortunately.

First card of this player in my collection, from the repack my brother brought me.

I scanned my entire Gerard King collection, I believe...a grand total of 2 cards. I enjoy getting the obscure guys more than the big names.

 

Made a trade on the Database and got two 1979-80 Topps cards, both Nets, my favorite team. (The other, not shown, is Eddie Jordan. That card is slightly out of register, not uncommon with cards of the era). The trader also sent along three cards from 1993-94 Stadium Club that I didn't know were coming, and I needed all three of them as well!  1979-80 is one of the few sets from the era I don't have complete or darn close to it. I have 75-76 through 78-79 complete, I'm short about 10 panels from 1980-81 and I have 1981-82 complete.

I'm still working on those hockey cards I was given back in January. Of those not already on the Database I only have foils and chrome cards left to do, but they are a lot of effort and I don't really enjoy it so I don't work on them too often.
Still working on the football, too.

That's it for this week!

2500

I hit a milestone this past Saturday...the 2,500th different person to appear in my NBA collection! This is a big deal, because...well, it's 2500 different people, but also because I have been actively trying to get every different person who appears on an NBA card into my collection.

It's hard work. There are a lot of obscure people who only get on one card. There are also a lot of pioneer era players who only got one card each, in 1948 Bowman, 1957-58 Topps and 1961-62 Fleer; each of those sets is fairly expensive for even the common players. Even with hitting the 2500 mark, I still have almost 500 people missing from my collection. Possibly more than that, considering I find out about new people with rare cards on a regular basis.

I doubt I will ever be able to get everybody who has a card into my collection. Aside from the expensive old timers, there are some people thrown into sets that only have one card extant. Luckily, it's a college only coach that they had sign a SN1 autograph for an NBA set, so it's peripheral at best.

It does include more than just NBA players. It also includes coaches, and ABA players, even those who did not play in the NBA or at least not get NBA cards.

It does not include college issues, multi-sport or unlicensed issues- those are NOT NBA cards.
It also does not count shared cards; there are a couple of people who did not get their own cards. Joe Crispin in 2001-02 Inspirations is the only one not on a League Leaders card I can think of off the top of my head. It DOES count the people who only got cards in 1980-81 Topps, as they are separate cards that happen to be stuck together.

There is also the possibility that I have not counted right, although that's doubtful as I let the computer count for me...it's much more likely I've listed somebody more than once, or missed listing somebody, for example, when I wrote down all the people in my collection, which I then typed into an Excel chart...I somehow missed Larry Bird. If I could miss somebody that big of a deal, than I could easily miss somebody else. I am currently in a multi-year long process of fully figuring out my collection- I started in 2013, and I doubt I will finish this decade.

Anyway, here is the card of person #2500 in my collection. It's not a very good card. The Excalibur set is one of the worst designs Panini has used. Still, a card's a card.

If you would like to see a list of all the people in my NBA collection, just stay tuned for a few days, as it's something I plan to post up as a page up at the top, to go along with the list of people missing from my collection. (I better remove Mirotic off THAT list!) . I also plan to post a list of the NASCAR people IN my collection, I just need to find the time to type it up.