Finally, cards for the Americans!

 As I have documented before, the Nets are my favorite team in the NBA, and they also started back in the ABA days...as the New York Americans, a moniker they carried for only one year. They changed to the Nets simply because it rhymed with Mets and Jets, two established New York sports teams. 

However, the early days of the ABA are not well represented on cards. Until Topps made the choice to put them in their 1971-72 set, there was pretty much nothing for the ABA...if there were any cards they were regional issues that I am unaware of or have forgotten as I've been thinking more about models for the past three years. 

Until 2019, that is. A new company called Lana Sports issued a set of cards based on the first season of the ABA, 1967-68. All the players in the league got a card...but unfortunately they aren't photos. I saw the set's announcement and that it carried a hefty $250 per box price tag...I couldn't do it. However, in April one of my friends on the Database got his hands on a set and broke it up, and offered me the Americans, a trade I gladly made. 

Here's just a sample of them. The art...isn't great. Have to be honest, I haven't ever seen a photo of most of these guys before, but the guys I am familiar with...I recognize them, but it's like a cartoon version of them I suppose is the best way to put it. 

I don't want to sound ungrateful here, I'm very glad there is finally some recognition for the first year of "my team". I just wish they had used photos, even black and white photos. 

Many of the players in the set are appearing on cards for the first time ever. 

The cards feature an interesting texture. The card front is almost rubbery, but I like it. The backs are normal card texture, glossy but not high UV coating. No UV coating at all as far as I can tell. Speaking of the backs...

The backs are well done. They have a faux brown paper cardstock and have a nice writeup of the player's season, with a red, white and blue theme to fit the ABA. 

I believe Lana's original plan was to do a set for each of the ABA's seasons, but so far this has been the only set released. I don't know if they failed due to the price point and/or art style or it's just taking a long time to paint all the images needed and another set is forthcoming. If they remain at $250 a box, it will be out of my price range which is unfortunate. 

Turkey Red on Turkey Day

A couple days back I found a team bag full of cards that I had no recollection of ever seeing before...

https://twitter.com/ElCaminoBilly/status/1199550517480964096

I don't know how to embed a Twitter status, but you can see them all there. As I was working on scanning them yesterday, I realized, wait a minute, tomorrow is Thanksgiving...traditionally known as a day of turkey in the USA. And three of the cards are from the Topps Turkey Red set of 2006-07...man, this just writes itself!

I knew I had to wait and scan, and post, these Turkey Reds on Turkey Day! So, I did exactly that. I literally held off on scanning these a day just so I could do them on Thanksgiving...yeah, I'm weird. I'm also having chicken, not turkey, for dinner. And it won't even be fried!

The Turkey Red set was based on a 1911 set that was 126 cards, and split 2/3rds baseball and the rest boxing. The Turkey in Turkey Red is actually based on the country, not the bird, but close enough.

All three of these cards feature legendary players, with an actual image superimposed in front of a very unrealistic background. The cards also feature an interesting texture on the front and back. I like them, even with the phony background. The George Gervin card is actually the ABA's Virginia Squires, which is where he started his career. He played only a year and a half with them before being traded to the Spurs in a financial maneuver, where he would become a Hall of Famer, and this is my first card of him with the Squires! It's also only my fourth post-ABA card of the Squires, and one of them is a reprint of Dr. J's rookie card from the 50th anniversary celebration. The Bill Russell image is used on at least two other cards in my collection from modern Topps, and the Maravich image is the same one used on Topps' 1972-73 base card...more than likely actually taken by a Topps photographer.

As much as I love to get any new cards of Hall of Famers, the Gervin Squires card is clearly my favorite here, because it's the only one of him with that team.

Thanks Jon for sending them to me!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And remember, you have until midnight tonight to enter the contest from a few posts ago!

August 2017 Trade Recap

Hopefully I will get this one up much sooner than I got July's up. August started out well, with more cards rolling in fast and frequently, many of which I didn't even expect.

The first official trade arrived to me on August 5th, and it turned out to be a huge one...and involved two other bloggers and a trade made on the Trading Card Database! Tyler of Rekindling the Cardboard Flame won a contest on Baseball Card Breakdown, and traded me the cards he didn't want. I sent him a box of SuperSonics and some other stuff he didn't know was coming. Luckily, he didn't mind my sending him less than he sent me, because he sent me exactly 333 cards! Also luckily, I can only mail on Saturdays, and I got in the trade you will see below this, which included a spare Sonic that I also got in the package for Tyler. The rare 4-person trade, essentially.

The cards from Tyler were mostly non-sports cards...

10 base cards from the Captain America movie, including this manufactured patch (which I actually like)

 A whole bunch of the 2014 Panini Country Music cards. Panini really missed the mark with this set. They marketed it as a super-high end hit based set, with the boxes going for more than $120 when they came out. Even though I listen to country music almost exclusively, I didn't do any of the set. It was also hobby only, no retail presence whatsoever. The boxes now go for about $20 and I will probably pick up one some day. I'm kind of hoping it will drop even further, but if they are $20 during this year's Black Friday sales at D&A I will probably get one.  (Knowing my luck, I will probably get autographs from Florida-Georgia Line, which besides having no singing talent, have no writing talent either as both were auto-penned) Another problem they had is that the checklist was...how shall I put this...weak. I have listened to country music almost exclusively since 2006, and about 1/3rd of the set are people I've never even heard of. Very little star power, even less of a presence for the long-time, well known people. Alabama, Neil McCoy, Joe Diffie and LeeAnn Rimes are about the only names active in the 90s or before. No Brooks & Dunn (my favorites), no Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, etc. Not that there aren't some talented people and people who I enjoy listening to in the set...it's just something that could have been so much better. Which probably explains why they only did one of the sets.

Not only were there base cards, there were inserts and even green foil parallels of the inserts in the box.

There were a whole bunch of Beach Boys cards too, which I am really glad of. This set didn't have much presence here locally, but I've always been a Beach Boys fan, since I was in middle school and discovered them. The late 60s sound is why I don't say I listen to country exclusively, because I will still listen to the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, the Grass Roots, etc, on a fairly regular basis. As it turned out, we discovered we are VERY distant cousins to the Wilsons and Mike Love in late 2016. Incredibly cool for me. This is actually a Surfer parallel, which I believe fell one per pack. It has a gold foil guy on a surfboard on the bottom of the card front...kind of a stealth parallel, which is pretty unusual for Panini. As far as I know these were the only two music themed sets they did, unfortunately. Unlike the Country Music set, they got the Beach Boys set right.

This counts as a basketball card, right?

This is the 2011 set, there is also a soccer themed set from 2006 that was included. I didn't have either set in my collection previously, and now I'm something like 7 cards away from the 100 card 2011 set and about 15 away from the 90 card 2006 set. (it had what I think were short prints). I did add the missing cards to my wantlist on the Trading Card Database if you think you can help me finish the sets. Surprisingly I've never really gotten a lot of Bench Warmer cards...I mean, I am a guy in my 30s who hasn't had a girlfriend in way too long a time, after all.

But it wasn't all non-sports...

There were also a bunch of cards from the 1992 Impel US Olympicards set! Unlike most of Impel's sets, I only had one card from this set before. This card is actually an insert, even though it uses literally the exact same design as the base cards. I now have nearly a half of the 110 card set! We got the Olympic Channel in July, and I've been watching it almost every day since we got it. I have enjoyed swimming, diving, volleyball, track and field, archery, triathlon and more. We REALLY need cards for the non-big 5 sports. I will watch and watch religiously almost all of the Olympic sports. I can't get into soccer or boxing and I will not be supporting the inclusion of skateboarding in 2020, but every other sport...I love them all.

The next trade I mentioned was with Trading Card Database member ntlwhlr and he sent me a bunch of great cards. While it started with 3 cards from 2004-05...

(not shown: 2004-05 Flair Dwyane Wade)
the majority of the package were 1972-73 Topps.

And that's not even all of them! Just the ones I could fit on my scanner tray at one time. Some bigger names too, including Hall of Famers...not all of them were new, and in fact there were even more than one copy of some of them. (One of those was one that I sent to Tyler, hopefully he will show it on his blog because I forgot who it was)
Even better...Jim Ligon might be a One Hit Wonder! The Database shows him having a card from a team issue of the Squires but I'm not sure if it's an actual card or just a photograph. I really need to learn more about team issues of the 60s and 70s. Either way, it's my first card of him! Most of the cards I actually needed were ABA cards, which is great. I love getting new ABA cards.
Not shown: #27 Charlie Davis, #157 NBA Finals Game 4, #179 Mack Calvin, #215 Billy Cunningham (and not counting the duplicates, either). He also sent along two cards from 1970-71 Topps...making what may be the first trade package to ever include them for me. Unfortunately I had both already. (no scans)

The third trade was with frequent trading partner Sahal694 of the Trading Card Database. A few months ago I was the first person he ever traded online with and now we've done 4 or 5 trades. It was an unusual trade in that he sent me a pack of the new 2016-17 Excalibur set, which I was unable to get any of for myself.

 First card from the set in my collection.

 Only real set of the year to include photos of players traded at the Trade Deadline. Prestige might have some, I don't remember. Think they just got a Traded tag though.

 A LeBron Refractor Prizm insert! Not a bad first pack.

He also sent me this Aaron Judge from Topps and a couple of cards from this year's Bunt set. I will accept any sports card in trade. While I don't actively purchase baseball or football too often, I will gladly accept them in trade...anything to make it happen!

I pulled off what was supposed to be a 1 for 1 card trade with Database member Littlegobbler36, but we both sent each other more than one card. The one I asked for was this Michael Waltrip card...

 and he also sent sent the final 4 cards I needed to finish the 1995 Maxx Standups insert!

 

That was a pretty busy month. one of the bigger trading months in a while. And, I'm getting it posted on September 1st, which is a lot better than I had been doing, so I'm happy about that. There may not be a trade recap for September, as I've turned off my tradelist on the Database for a while. There are some things coming up that are going to get all my money, and I honestly can't spare any to pay for the shipping in trades.  

For the next few posts you'll finally get to see all the projects I worked on with my latest COMC order, which I built for 10 months and teased a little while ago when it arrived.

30 Day Challenge 7: A card I bought in person and the story behind it

Before I get into today's post, a thanks to Chris aka The Collector. Got the package today! I'll have a proper post up as soon as I can, but likely in a few days. Luckily, I have all 30 of these Challenge posts written and ready to go so I just had to add this message to the front of one.

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This is a tough one. Most of my card collection I bought in person- the majority of my collection was purchased between 1996-2006, before I even had an Ebay account, so most of my cards were purchased in person. And the story is pretty much the same for all of them- I didn't have it, so I fixed that problem. That's pretty much the story of roughly half my collection, LOL. The other half being cards I received as gifts or in trade.

Choosing one that has some sort of meaning other than "I saw it, didn't have it, wanted it, could afford it" is a challenge, but again I will dip into my NBA pool and show a card I have shown before. The majority of my collection is NBA, so these posts have been trending more to the NBA, and this is a card that does have some added meaning to my NBA collection Wait, let me correct that. This is a card that has added meaning to my collection, but it's not an NBA card. Instead, I will show my first ABA card!

The last time I posted this card, back in 2015, I remembered it was important to me but I didn't remember why. Now I do...because, thankfully, I thought to write down why it was important in my paper listings. This was, in fact, my first ABA card! Interesting that it came from 1972-73 Topps, the 70s set I have the least of. Back when we used to have almost weekly shows and multiple shops, and I was building up my collection, I always gravitated towards 70s cards. I primarily learned the history of the sport by collecting vintage cards, from before I began collecting or in the case of the 70s cards, before I was born. But the 1972-73 set was always the toughest to find. To put it in perspective, I've completed the 1971-72 set, and also the 1975-76 through 1979-80 and 1981-82. I can't afford to complete 1980-81, and I'm working on- slowly- 1973-74 and 74-75. I have hopes that I can complete them some day. I can't afford to complete 1972-73 thanks to Dr. J.'s rookie card, but I'm not even close...it's a 264 card set, I have only 94 of them. In 21 years of collecting! And while it's true I was away from the NBA from 2006-12, since I came back I've added over 100 cards to my collection from 1974-75 and 1973-74 each in that time (granted most of the 1974-75 were a gift from Mark Hoyle, but I did find a dealer with a stash of them a year or two later)

I don't remember when I got this card...but I remember where. The Baseball Card Shoppe in Fishkill, NY, which is where I sourced my first 1970s cards from. It closed in either December 1996 or January 1997. But I must have gotten it earlier in the year because 1996 was a peak time for card shows, so for this to be my first it had to have been in either February or March- April at the latest. I began collecting the NBA in February, and the card show season started in March, which is how I'm figuring this. Unfortunately, I didn't begin to keep track of when I got any cards until right around Christmas 1998, so the exact date is lost. The fact that we went to the store every week eliminates any chance at guessing.

Who would have guessed this would be the longest post in the series so far?

Top 12 Cards of 2016

2016 was a great year for me cardwise. The rest of the year? Well, it wasn't as bad as 2013 or 2014, there's that.

But cardwise? One of the best, even though I spent less money on the hobby this year, the cards kept rolling in anyway thanks to the kindness of fellow collectors. Two of my top 5 most new cards in a day both came in 2016, and both were gifts from fellow collectors. A non-blogger hit me with 1192 new cards, 1127 of them NASCAR, on July 16th, and then just in November Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown dumped a bunch of his unwanted cards on me, and I ended up getting 2827 new cards that day, the second most I've ever gotten in one day! (Thanks to the box being mostly baseball, football and naked ladies, none of which I had much of, so not a lot of duplicates). I'm writing this before Christmas, and I've already gotten 9,777 new cards in 2016. More than half of them came to me as gifts, with more than a third just from those two gift packages alone!

I decided I would go through my Excel charts, and pick out my favorite card from each month, and showcase them here in one end-of-year post.

Some months were easy, but some of them were tough. Not for lack of choice, but because I got so many great cards! Two months actually had cards that I truly feel bad to leave off, but I went both times with cards I had been chasing for 15 or more years, and that carried a lot of weight with my selections.

Here now is a look at my favorite new card from each month...some of which I've never shown on the blog before!

 January...this was the first card I got from this set, and it's Elton...with all three of the Clippers colors including a patch, plus it's SN25/25. Has a lot going for it. This won't be the last time you will see Elton in this countdown.

 February. 1997-98 Ultra is a favorite set of mine (remember it was in my Top 20 countdown of my favorite sets, which I did in January and February). I had never gotten a Platinum Medallion from the set, so I went looking for one and found Kevin Willis. Each of the Platinums are SN to 100. Later in the year I would add the Serge Zwikker from the same set. I also added the 1999-00 and 2000-01 Platinum Medallions to my collection in 2016.

 March. This is my first patch from the Brooklyn era of the Nets, and when I bought it, I didn't know it was SN1 of 25, so not only is it a bonus in that I love SN1 cards, 1 is also his jersey number!

 April is the one month I really didn't have a strong standout, usually there were one or two that stood out, a couple of months I didn't even have to really think about. This one completes the Foil set of 1996 Pinnacle. Back in the 1990s I bought a set of these at a card show, but the seller didn't know what they were doing and had included a Winston Cup Collection parallel in place of the actual #13. The Winston Cup Collection cards were one per box or less, I believe, so it worked out OK, but the set was one card short for several years.

 May. I pulled this one! It's the first time I've pulled a One of One since Christmas 2006. I never showed it on the blog because I was trying to complete the Rainbow first, but I came up short on that so it makes it's blog debut today.

 June's is a simple base card, but it's been one I've been chasing for years. I did a box of 1994-95 Topps Embossed around the year 2000, but I came up one card short...#57, this one. I've been chasing it ever since. I even had someone on the Beckett message board years ago tell me they had the card but wouldn't send to me because "it wasn't worth the effort"...even though I offered to pay for it. I finally got it on COMC this year.

 July is when I got the huge box of mostly NASCAR cards, and this was my favorite in it, that hat relic for Martin Truex Jr. is the kicker. Part of the NASCAR logo!

 August is when Panini debuted their NASCAR sets, and for the most part I'm really happy with them. I got a box of Prizm (the first set) and I knew one of the cards from that box would be the card for August. Even though I got an autograph SN10, I couldn't remember which one without looking it up...(I have several autographs from the set now) I remembered this card without any trouble and so it got the nod.

 September and November were the two toughest months for me to choose. September came down to three cards- this one, my first card from 1938 Horrors of War, my first card from any version of the 1966 Batman sets, and the Bill Walton autograph that Angus sent me for winning his contest. I ended up choosing this one because Horrors of War is such an iconic set- considered to be the most historically important non-sports set ever- and I'd been hunting for an example for so long. I thought that I had found it one other time in the past but it turned out to be a different military set from the same producer (Gum, Inc, which I believe became Bowman).

 This one stands out for the month of October. I got some great cards during the month and even a bunch from this rare set, the sticker insert in 1971-72 Topps (the first standard card sized insert in NBA history) but I had to choose the ABA logos over the NBA logos. This is, I believe, the only card ever to show the majority of these logos in color. For the Condors, Pros, Rockets and Squires, I believe this is the only time these logos appear on a card...ever.

 November was by far the hardest month to choose. I had been chasing this card for 15 years, and Racing Champions holds a very special place in my collection. I also got a great sketch card, made apparently just for me, by Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown, of Elton Brand. It came up between those two and basically the fact that I had been chasing this one for 15 years- a card I never thought I would ever get-got it the nod.
I'm basically going to say it was a tie for the month of November.

December, however, was the easiest month. Yes, I wrote up this post before Christmas, which is always a big day for my collection as my family knows what I like and treats me very well- but my very first Elton Brand Printing Plate is going to be pretty much impossible to top! I saw this card on COMC, and I had to buy it, even though it's actually the most I've spend on a single card in about 12 years- it cost me $28. Luckily, I had the money available...sometimes during the year I wouldn't have, but I did, and all was well. Ironically the card it's a plate of is ALSO a 1/1 so finding it will probably not be possible.

And that's my top card from each month. I really enjoyed doing this and I have the record of each card from each month beginning in 2014...so expect to see rundowns of 2014 and 2015 coming shortly into the new year.

I didn't want to end the year on a sad note with my In Memorium post so this goes out as the final post of 2016- my second full year of blogging, most successful by far as well, as I topped 150 pots for the first time ever...and with this being my 25th post in the month of December, it's also my most successful month of posting as well. I consider finishing a post to my liking enough to actually post it a success, by the way.

Look and see Look 'N See!

Hope that title doesn't confuse anyone, hah! You aren't seeing double! There's a lot more than that in this post, but I thought it was funny.

Yesterday morning, around 2AM, I wrote up a post about some 1956 Topps Jets cards I had acquired. In it, I mentioned that 1952 Topps Look 'N See now held my #1 most wanted non-sport slot. Wouldn't you know it but later that same day, my family took an unexpected trip to the antique mall where my favorite vintage dealer is set up, and he had brought in some Look 'N See since the last time I saw him!

What are the odds of that? I never know what he is going to have new, but I didn't expect it to work out that way. I'm not complaining at all!

As you can see, they are in rather poor shape, but I don't care. I am thrilled to have them!
The backs feature orange writing with a blueish-purple design that tells the answer the trivia question. I know that the cards came with a sheet of red "something" that you put over the card back to reveal the answer, but I don't know exactly what it was. The scanner kind of pulled the blue image enough that you can see it is a swan.

After thinking about it overnight, I think my most wanted non-sport set now is 1996 Batman Holo Series, which is entirely made up of holograms. I'm all over the map.

Now, of course when I go there I make sure to visit all the card dealers. There are 4 set up full time and occasionally more will set up in the seasonal outdoor section they have. This time, there was a dealer I've never met before outside, and he had some great stuff.

Oh yeah! 1971-72 Topps Stickers! These were 1-per pack in the 1971-72 Topps set, but they are MUCH rarer than the base cards. I've completed the base set, years ago, but until yesterday I only had one from this set.
But wait, there's more!

The team logo stickers! These are the keys to the set in my opinion. These are the first time ABA logos EVER appeared on a trading card, and the first time since 1961-62 for the NBA...much different since then, and they were not in color on the Fleer cards. Also, it's interesting because Topps lore has always been that they had the Player's Association licensed, but not the NBA itself, which is why the teams that had their name, not their location, on the jersey front, were worn backwards. Yet here are all the team logos in bright, unmistakable colors. In the very same packs. Makes you think.

1973-74 Topps stickers! An insert into the 1973-74 set, these are in great shape, with almost no adhesive discoloration. I love these. I love team logos and they are rare on cards before the 1980s. Check out that Denver Rockets logo. Is that not great? They changed their name to the Nuggets after the season these were issued in and were one of four teams absorbed by the NBA after 1975-76.

These may be the rarest vintage I got from him, though...

1974 Fleer Cloth Stickers! These are so rare that I could not find a single one for sale on Ebay, and only one on COMC. These are from the 1974-75 season, which was the first year of the Washington Bullets. Most places list them as "1974" only but they are unquestionably 1974-75. These were the first Fleer issues for the NBA since 1961-62, but the adhesive has damaged all of them...which probably is why they are so cheap when you do find them. (I paid less than a dollar each). I am not sure if they were white borders originally but they are yellowish tan now. Each team in the NBA got one, but these are the first ones I have. Fleer also issued glossy paper team logo stickers from 1977-82 that are also missing from my collection currently.

While most of what he had was vintage- not all of it was.

 This Kanter is SN 49.

 This Deng is SN to 99. Both of these cards are the first I have from the parallel set.

 A multi-sport card, this is the largest set in my collection...it is card #1127. I know there are some baseball sets that are larger but this is only the second card in my collection where the card number is quadruple digits. The other is from the same set.

 A Magic Johnson promo. Note the career Laker is wearing an Orlando Magic shirt. I have no idea where this one came from but it's clearly from 1993-94.

 Gold parallel of 2007-08 Sweet Shot. This is only my third card from the set.

I don't even know where this LeBron came from!

This was the first card I actually found yesterday. I always go for the rare teams when I can. You can tell this insert was designed with an autograph parallel in mind.

This one has pretty much everything going for it: It's a 1990s parallel, it's die cut, and it's serially numbered! It's also my first from the Final Cut parallel in my collection.

After paying the new dealer, I went in and saw my regular dealers. The vintage guy doesn't ONLY do vintage, though...I also picked up two decidedly vintage 1957 Topps Planes cards...

...and this 1989-90 Hoops 100 Superstars Michael Jordan card. I remember the first time I saw this set, I was already familiar with the 1989-90 Hoops design, and when I got my first one I was SURE that somebody had colored the border with a highlighter. Eventually I leaned better. I think I realized it wasn't the case when I got the regular card of the same player and it was a different number. It was Scottie Pippen...I don't know why but I remember getting it in 1996. This MJ is not in great shape but I'd rather have a damaged card than no card, you know?

He also had this card, which is totally unlike pretty much everything else he has ever had since I've known him for the past few years.

It's the first autograph I've seen him have in the about 3 years I've known him. It's also the first relic. Autographed rookie jersey cards were a staple in SPx beginning in 2000-01. This card is from 2001-02.

After paying him, I went to another dealer, that mostly has unopened boxes of late 80s and early 90s baseball and hockey. I found a set of Knicks Pogs that I had never seen before there, and promptly added them to my collection. The dealer, who it turned out I knew from Facebook and didn't realize it, thought there were two different versions but all of them in the stack were the same. I think they are from 1994-95. I need to look and see when Charles Smith left the team.

I actually was big into Pogs for a little while, back in the day I would have purchased two sets, one to keep as a unit and one to punch out and use. That was a long time ago, although I do still have my pog collection I have not done anything with them in quite some time.

I looked it up, it was 1994-95. There is nothing on the back, so I have no idea where they came from. My guess is that they were handed out at a game. 

Then I visited the final dealer, who has a ton of cards, but finding what you want is kind of akin to prospecting. All the cards are in boxes, but they are not sorted in any way, shape or form. Sure, you'll find runs of various sets or sports, but mostly it's just a total jumble...and I actually kind of like that. It takes longer to go through, but it's kind of fun seeing all kinds of different cards. I've found some really good stuff in those boxes, and I wrote up a post about the first visit I had to that dealer, but I never actually posted it. I usually take home more than 100 cards but this trip I "only" took home 60. Now, I'm not going to post them all but I will post some highlights.

 7 cards from 2012-13 Panini Brilliance, 2 of which were base, the rest insert. This Anthony Davis card was one I guessed on. There were several I guessed on whether I needed or not...I thought I already had this one, and I figured if nothing else a RC of him would be good trade bait. As it turned out, all the others I guessed on were duplicates, but THIS one turned out to be one I needed! I wish I had a better memory, but in this case it's kind of funny.

 1995-96 SP Premium Collection Holoview of Grant Hill. The last time I got a new insert from 1995-96 SP was 2004. That's been a while!

 The 2014-15 Prestige set was a Target exclusive, and I don't really like how it was done. The base version was normal card stock, the medium priced version was called Prestige Plus and was mirror foil (this card) and the highest price version was called Prestige Premium and was printed on thick holofoil stock. I got lots of the basic version, and I got a Premium box for Christmas that year but I never got any of the Plus cards. I nabbed one on COMC when I finished off the missing sets, but that was an insert. This is my first base card from the Plus set.

 I got 2 base, 1 Prism parallel and 1 insert from 2013-14 Prizm. This is my favorite Prizm design. He had more but I have a lot of them and didn't want to spend money on duplicates.

 Quite a few 2015-16 Select. 10 base and 4 Prizm parallels!

 8 2012-13 Marquee base cards and 1 Champions insert.

 This is probably the best card I got from him. Turner is a great player and this one is SN to only 49! I'm not sure if it's an parallel or a base card. I don't know much about Limited. I've never opened even a single pack of the brand.

 Three inserts from 2003-04 Topps. I didn't realize I was buying three, a Ricky Davis from the same insert was stuck to the back of this one. (no damage to either). Luckily, I needed the Davis too.

4 rookies from 2003-04 Standing O. Last time I went through his boxes, I saw a handful of RC from this set, but I didn't get them. When I got home, I checked my listings and saw I didn't have many from the set, but the only one I remembered him having was Maciej Lampe, who I did have in my collection. When I found them again yesterday they were all still there...except the Lampe!

This one threw me at first...I have a lot of 2012-13 Prestige, but this one as you can see is missing the white strip that's on every veteran base card.

So what is it?

A Starting 5 contest card! I should have known, as this dealer has been the only place I've seen these Panini contest cards, which they have done since 2010-11 and still did as recently as 2015-16. This is the first I've seen from the 2012-13 Prestige set. I didn't know it existed before yesterday.

Then, when I got home, I had a PWE from CrazieJoe waiting for me, but that will be covered in my October trade recap, which I may get posted tomorrow...

Thanks for reading!